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 1993 / Active

Paula A. Nakayama

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Paula A. Nakayama is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, serving since 1993. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1993 · 33 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1993	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Education

University of California-Davis
UC Law San Francisco

Judicial Record

In our data, Nakayama authored 135 published opinions for the court (1994–2017), plus 42 dissents and 37 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Arceo (364 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. 192 of these were attributed to Nakayama 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
1996	State v. Arceo· Dissent†	928 P.2d 843	364
2000	In Re Water Use Permit Applications†	9 P.3d 409	218
1995	Tachibana v. State· Concurrence†	900 P.2d 1293	207
1997	Kawamata Farms, Inc. v. United Agri Products†	948 P.2d 1055	195
1994	Ross v. Stouffer Hotel Co. (Hawai'i) Ltd.†	879 P.2d 1037	188
1996	State v. Eastman†	913 P.2d 57	166
1996	Best Place, Inc. v. Penn America Insurance Co.†	920 P.2d 334	165
2006	State v. Nichols· Concurrence†	141 P.3d 974	164
1996	State v. Ganal· Concurrence†	917 P.2d 370	124
1994	Montalvo v. Lapez· Concurrence†	884 P.2d 345	108
2004	French v. Hawaii Pizza Hut, Inc.· Dissent†	99 P.3d 1046	105
2007	State v. Matavale· Dissent†	166 P.3d 322	101
1995	Weinberg v. Mauch†	890 P.2d 277	101
2009	Sierra Club v. Department of Transportation of the State· Concurrence†	202 P.3d 1226	94
2002	State v. Cordeiro· Concurrence†	56 P.3d 692	94

Showing the 15 most-cited of 214 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 Paula A. Nakayama on?: Paula A. Nakayama 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

33 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).