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 1975 / Served to 1979

Homer/ Alan Baird Kidwell

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Homer/ Alan Baird Kidwell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1941–2000
Tenure: 1975–1979 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kidwell authored 51 published opinions for the court (1975–1979), plus 10 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Food Pantry, Ltd. v. Waikiki Business Plaza, Inc. (99 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. 69 of these were attributed to Kidwell 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
1978	Food Pantry, Ltd. v. Waikiki Business Plaza, Inc.· Concurrence†	575 P.2d 869	99
1978	State v. Huelsman†	588 P.2d 394	60
1976	DeFries v. ASSOCIATION OF OWNERS, 999 WILDER· Dissent†	555 P.2d 855	55
1979	Molokoa Village Development Co. v. Kauai Electric Co.†	593 P.2d 375	47
1978	Stahl v. Balsara· Concurrence†	587 P.2d 1210	46
1978	Reliable Collection Agency, Ltd. v. Cole†	584 P.2d 107	42
1976	State v. Padilla†	552 P.2d 357	42
1978	State v. Bell· Concurrence†	589 P.2d 517	39
1978	Friedrich v. Department of Transportation†	586 P.2d 1037	38
1978	Hawaii Government Employees' Ass'n v. County of Maui· Concurrence†	576 P.2d 1029	38
1977	Sawada v. Endo· Dissent†	561 P.2d 1291	38
1977	Associated Engineers & Contractors, Inc. v. State†	567 P.2d 397	37
1979	Kahalekai v. Doi· Concurrence†	590 P.2d 543	32
1979	Haworth v. State†	592 P.2d 820	31
1979	Au-Hoy v. Au-Hoy· Dissent†	590 P.2d 80	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 69 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 Homer/ Alan Baird Kidwell on?: Homer/ Alan Baird Kidwell 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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4 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).