It Ain't No Brief "Brief"

Weighing in at an impressive 57-pages and two giant binders, the Mauna Kea hui's "Opening Brief" in the contested case against the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) outlines the legal reasons why the TMT simply cannot be built in Mauna Kea's conservation district.

For me, knowing that we are going up against literally million-dollar attorneys is quite intimidating. Submitting this brief was the kind of stressful experience that really gives you character, if it doesn't kill you first.  Well, I am happy to report that we all survived and are wiser for it.

It was a 100% collaborative endeavor -- our band of volunteers and community members poured over documents, researched caselaw, and debated the arguments.  All of the petitioners contributed to the two big binders of exhibits and the actual written argument itself. We are very proud of our "little" brief.

But it would be lame of me not to give a special shout out to our star legal intern this summer, Bianca Isaki.  She is a 2L at Richardson Law School. She patiently listened to our debates on the phone, and then got to work - she really wrote the most important parts of the brief, scored some of our key experts, did a lot of the fact-checking, most of the editing, and all of the bluebooking, but most of all, it was her and that fab bike of hers that got the brief to the DLNR on time -- 3:56 to be exact (for a 4:00 pm filing deadline -- see what I mean about stress that could kill you?!).  She is amazing!

The argument itself is quite simple:  Mauna Kea is overbuilt.

But since we have been saying that for the better part of 10 years now and UH continues to push for telescope development on Mauna Kea, we thought we would take this opportunity to spell it out as clearly as possible.

I hope that sparks your interest enough to check out the not-so-brief brief itself.  It and some of the exhibits we filed are available at: http://kahea.org/tmt-exhibits-list

The hearing itself is open to the public -- we hope you will join us. It will be held at the Hilo State Building, August 15-18th.