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 2003 / Served to 2012

James E. Duffy Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

James E. Duffy Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2003–2012 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Education

St Thomas University
Marquette University

Judicial Record

In our data, Duffy authored 28 published opinions for the court (2003–2012), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: State v. Nichols (164 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. 29 of these were attributed to Duffy 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
2006	State v. Nichols†	141 P.3d 974	164
2009	Sierra Club v. Department of Transportation of the State	202 P.3d 1226	94
2004	Paul's Electrical Service, Inc. v. Befitel†	91 P.3d 494	85
2006	Courbat v. Dahana Ranch, Inc.· Dissent†	141 P.3d 427	82
2007	Citizens Against Reckless Development v. Zoning Board of Appeals†	114 Haw. 184	73
2007	Awakuni v. Awana†	165 P.3d 1027	71
2005	State v. Maluia†	108 P.3d 974	59
2005	Ueoka v. Szymanski†	114 P.3d 892	53
2006	Wong v. Cayetano†	143 P.3d 1	52
2004	State v. Prendergast†	83 P.3d 714	41
2003	State v. Haili†	79 P.3d 1263	35
2008	State v. Pond· Concurrence†	193 P.3d 368	26
2005	State v. Yamada· Dissent†	122 P.3d 254	23
2005	State v. Keawe†	108 P.3d 304	22
2008	State v. Heggland†	193 P.3d 341	20

Showing the 15 most-cited of 32 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 E. Duffy Jr. on?: James E. Duffy Jr. 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).