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 1980 / Served to 1989

Edward H. Nakamura

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Edward H. Nakamura was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1922–1997
Tenure: 1980–1989 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Nakamura authored 132 published opinions for the court (1980–1989), plus 21 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Life of the Land v. LAND USE COM'N, ETC. (128 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. 156 of these were attributed to Nakamura 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
1981	Life of the Land v. LAND USE COM'N, ETC.†	623 P.2d 431	128
1989	Sandy Beach Defense Fund v. City Council· Dissent†	773 P.2d 250	114
1987	Knodle v. Waikiki Gateway Hotel, Inc.†	742 P.2d 377	101
1988	State v. Fox†	760 P.2d 670	94
1987	Kona Old Hawaiian Trails Group Ex Rel. Serrano v. Lyman†	734 P.2d 161	92
1984	Sturla, Inc. v. Fireman's Fund Insurance†	684 P.2d 960	88
1984	State v. Wyatt†	687 P.2d 544	87
1984	State v. Fields†	686 P.2d 1379	79
1988	State v. Castro†	756 P.2d 1033	66
1982	Mahuiki v. Planning Commission†	654 P.2d 874	65
1986	Kaeo v. Davis†	719 P.2d 387	62
1987	Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs v. Yamasaki†	737 P.2d 446	60
1985	Association of Owners of Kukui Plaza v. Swinerton & Walberg Co.†	705 P.2d 28	60
1980	State v. Murray†	621 P.2d 334	59
1983	Bidar v. Amfac, Inc.†	669 P.2d 154	56

Showing the 15 most-cited of 158 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 Edward H. Nakamura on?: Edward H. Nakamura 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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9 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).