How do judges of the Supreme Court of Hawaii reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Supreme Court of Hawaii / Joined 1969 / Served to 1979

Bert Kobayashi

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Bert Kobayashi was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–2005
Tenure: 1969–1979 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Education

Gettysburg College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Kobayashi authored 112 published opinions for the court (1969–1979), plus 18 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Silver v. Castle Memorial Hospital (90 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 138 of these were attributed to Kobayashi by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1972	Silver v. Castle Memorial Hospital†	497 P.2d 564	90
1978	State v. Apao†	586 P.2d 250	82
1974	State v. Pokini· Dissent†	526 P.2d 94	65
1975	Kelley v. Kokua Sales and Supply, Ltd.†	532 P.2d 673	55
1977	Farrior v. Payton†	562 P.2d 779	54
1974	State v. Park· Concurrence†	525 P.2d 586	52
1978	In Re Kauai Electric Division of Citizens Utilities Co.†	590 P.2d 524	51
1971	State v. Grahovac†	480 P.2d 148	51
1974	Town v. Land Use Commission†	524 P.2d 84	50
1976	Uyemura v. Wick†	551 P.2d 171	49
1971	East Diamond Head Ass'n v. Zoning Board of Appeals of Honolulu†	479 P.2d 796	49
1972	State v. Kantner· Dissent†	493 P.2d 306	48
1975	Orso v. City and County of Honolulu†	534 P.2d 489	47
1974	DeMello v. First Insurance Company of Hawaii, Ltd.· Dissent†	523 P.2d 304	45
1976	State v. Napeahi†	556 P.2d 569	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 138 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of Hawaii reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Bert Kobayashi on?: Bert Kobayashi was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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10 years on the Supreme Court of Hawaii. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).