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 1917 / Served to 1941

James Leslie Coke

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

James Leslie Coke was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 1917. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1875–1957
Tenure: 1917–1941 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1917	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Education

University of Georgia

Judicial Record

In our data, Coke authored 203 published opinions for the court (1917–1941), plus 3 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Parke v. Parke (35 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. 121 of these were attributed to Coke 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
1920	Parke v. Parke†	25 Haw. 397	35
1918	Territory v. Alcantara†	24 Haw. 197	26
1939	O'Brien v. Walker· Dissent	35 Haw. 104	23
1920	Tsuru v. Bayer†	25 Haw. 693	22
1938	Territory Ex Rel. Whitehouse v. Pai-A†	34 Haw. 722	20
1920	In re the Territory of Hawaii†	25 Haw. 357	19
1921	Morgan v. Yamada†	26 Haw. 17	18
1940	Territory of Hawaii v. Yoshimura	35 Haw. 324	17
1920	Yee Hop v. Young Sak Cho†	25 Haw. 494	17
1918	Silva v. Kaiwiki Milling Co.†	24 Haw. 324	16
1939	Territory Ex Rel. Bigelow v. Honolulu Plantation Co.†	34 Haw. 859	14
1936	Oleson v. Borthwick	33 Haw. 766	14
1935	Akagi v. Oshita	33 Haw. 343	14
1940	In Re the Estate of Allen	35 Haw. 501	13
1937	Territory v. Corum	34 Haw. 167	13

Showing the 15 most-cited of 213 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 James Leslie Coke on?: James Leslie Coke 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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24 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).