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 1984 / Active

James Wakatsuki

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

James Wakatsuki is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, serving since 1984. He previously served on the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1929 · age 97
Tenure: Since 1984 · 42 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals	–	–
1984	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wakatsuki authored 75 published opinions for the court (1984–1992), plus 12 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Hawaii's Thousand Friends v. Anderson (82 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. 86 of these were attributed to Wakatsuki 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
1989	Hawaii's Thousand Friends v. Anderson†	768 P.2d 1293	82
1990	State v. Matafeo· Concurrence†	787 P.2d 671	81
1990	State v. Batangan†	799 P.2d 48	72
1990	State v. Kumukau†	787 P.2d 682	58
1988	Lewis v. Lewis	748 P.2d 1362	50
1990	Leong Ex Rel. Leong v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals†	788 P.2d 164	47
1984	Puchert v. Agsalud†	677 P.2d 449	45
1985	State v. Akana†	706 P.2d 1300	43
1992	Chun v. Employees' Retirement System†	828 P.2d 260	41
1990	Johnston v. KFC National Management Co.†	788 P.2d 159	39
1992	Application of Thomas†	832 P.2d 253	36
1986	Cootey v. Sun Investment, Inc.†	718 P.2d 1086	35
1985	State v. Johnson†	711 P.2d 1295	34
1990	State v. Levinson· Dissent†	795 P.2d 845	33
1992	State v. Klafta· Dissent†	831 P.2d 512	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 89 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 is James Wakatsuki on?: James Wakatsuki is 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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42 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).