Newsmaker
Monday, March 15, 1999
Name: Isaac D. Hall Jr.
Age: 54
Education: J.D., Columbia University School of Law, 1971
Occupation: Attorney
Hobbies: Hiking
Isaac D. Hall has become almost synonymous with some environmental and native Hawaiian rights issues on the Valley Isle. Helping native
HawaiiansHe has helped a number of groups and individuals with free legal assistance.
In the mid-1970s, he assisted in doing legal research on behalf of Walter Ritte Jr. and Emmett Aluli in their fight to halt the military bombing of Kahoolawe and return the island to civilian use.
He helped to win concessions for public parking and shoreline access at Makena.
He's currently representing groups opposed to the expansion of the Kahului Airport runway and to the taking of stream water from East Maui.
Hall, who estimates he does at least about 30 hours of free legal work a month, said he feels these groups need to be represented and given a voice in the legal system.
"There would be a big gap otherwise," Hall said.
Hall noticed the huge gap in legal representation for African Americans in the early 1970s in Harlem, where he worked for several years for the nonprofit Legal Aid Society.
He later moved to Maui to work for the legal group in Wailuku.
Hall said that in the beginning the Legal Aid Society was engaged in "high-impact" legal cases.
One of them involved native Hawaiians' successful opposition to a corporation's tapping the Hanawi Stream in East Maui.
Hall left the group, which is partly state-funded, after a state law narrowed the work of attorneys to family law cases.
Hall comes from a family of attorneys: His father, Isaac Sr., practiced law in New York City, and his brother, Emlen, has taught law at the University of New Mexico.
Hall credits his wife, Dana Naone Hall, a native Hawaiian, with helping him to understand the political aspects of issues.
"I'm grateful for all the work she does," he said. "She does a lot more work for free than me."
Hall said he enjoys observing the progress of his 15-year-old daughter, Leahi, who has studied the Hawaiian language since childhood and speaks it fluently.
She recently completed a science project about a landfill in Maalaea.
"I'm excited to see it come out of her on her own terms," he said.
By Gary Kubota, Star-Bulletin
