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 1954 / Served to 1973

Masaji Marumoto

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Masaji Marumoto was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1906–1995
Tenure: 1954–1973 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Marumoto authored 110 published opinions for the court (1956–1973), plus 13 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Nishi v. Hartwell (57 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. 128 of these were attributed to Marumoto 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
1970	Nishi v. Hartwell†	473 P.2d 116	57
1971	State v. Goudy†	479 P.2d 800	56
1973	McBRYDE SUGAR COMPANY, LIMITED v. Robinson· Concurrence†	504 P.2d 1330	52
1971	State v. Cuevas†	488 P.2d 322	52
1958	Glover v. Fong†	42 Haw. 560	52
1973	County of Hawaii v. Sotomura· Concurrence†	517 P.2d 57	46
1969	Rogers v. State†	459 P.2d 378	45
1972	Dold v. Outrigger Hotel & Hawaii Hotels Operating Co.· Concurrence†	501 P.2d 368	44
1968	In Re Application of Ashford· Dissent†	440 P.2d 76	44
1973	Salavea v. City and County of Honolulu· Dissent†	517 P.2d 51	37
1969	MDG Supply, Inc. v. Diversified Investments, Inc.†	463 P.2d 525	37
1973	Waianae Model Neighborhood Area Ass'n v. City & County of Honolulu†	514 P.2d 861	36
1970	State Ex Rel. Kobayashi v. Zimring†	479 P.2d 202	35
1972	Application of Pioneer Mill Company· Dissent†	497 P.2d 549	33
1970	Hayes v. Gill†	473 P.2d 872	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 131 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 Masaji Marumoto on?: Masaji Marumoto 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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19 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).