How do judges of the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals / Joined 1992 / Active

Corinne K.A. Watanabe

Judge, Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals

Corinne K.A. Watanabe is a Judge of the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals, serving since 1992. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1992 · 34 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1992	Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Baylor University

Judicial Record

In our data, Watanabe authored 312 published opinions for the court (1992–2010), plus 2 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: GECC Financial Corp. v. Jaffarian (64 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. 105 of these were attributed to Watanabe 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
1995	GECC Financial Corp. v. Jaffarian†	904 P.2d 530	64
1995	Bernard v. Char†	903 P.2d 676	34
1994	State v. Lubong†	886 P.2d 766	33
2007	Jou v. National Interstate Ins. Co. of Haw.	157 P.3d 561	29
1994	State v. Iosefa†	880 P.2d 1224	28
1998	State v. Perez	976 P.2d 427	27
1992	MFD Partners v. Murphy†	9 Haw. App. 509	26
1995	Lee v. Elbaum†	887 P.2d 656	25
1994	State v. Nobriga†	873 P.2d 110	25
1992	State v. Palabay†	844 P.2d 1	25
1998	Torres v. Northwest Engineering Co.†	949 P.2d 1004	23
1996	Markham v. Markham· Concurrence†	909 P.2d 602	23
1997	State v. Torres†	945 P.2d 849	22
1995	Dunbar v. Thompson†	901 P.2d 1285	22
1993	State v. Lee†	856 P.2d 1279	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 324 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 Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court is Corinne K.A. Watanabe on?: Corinne K.A. Watanabe is a Judge of the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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