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 1955 / Served to 1959

Philip L. Rice

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Philip L. Rice was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 1955. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1886–1974
Tenure: 1955–1959 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1955	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Education

University of Chicago

Judicial Record

In our data, Rice authored 20 published opinions for the court (1953–1959), plus 5 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Territory of Hawaii v. Aquino (20 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. 18 of these were attributed to Rice 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
1959	Territory of Hawaii v. Aquino	43 Haw. 347	20
1958	Welsh v. Campbell†	42 Haw. 490	13
1958	Von Holt v. Izumo Taisha Kyo Mission†	42 Haw. 671	12
1956	Re Harriet Bouslog, an Attorney at Law· Concurrence	41 Haw. 270	11
1955	Whittemore v. Farrington†	41 Haw. 52	11
1958	Beckstrom v. Hawaiian Dredging Co.· Dissent†	42 Haw. 353	10
1958	Territory of Hawaii v. Josiah†	42 Haw. 367	9
1955	Carr v. Kinney· Concurrence	41 Haw. 166	9
1959	You Goo Ho v. Yee· Dissent†	43 Haw. 330	8
1957	City of Honolulu v. Collins†	42 Haw. 199	8
1953	McCaw Keating v. Tax Com'r Fase	40 Haw. 121	8
1959	You Goo Ho v. Yee· Dissent†	43 Haw. 289	7
1958	In re the Trust Estate of Meek†	42 Haw. 335	5
1957	Leslie v. Gonsalves†	42 Haw. 169	5
1957	Territory v. Ho	41 Haw. 565	5

Showing the 15 most-cited of 28 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 Philip L. Rice on?: Philip L. Rice 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

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

4 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).