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 2011 / Active

Sabrina S. McKenna

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Sabrina S. McKenna is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, serving since 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2011	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McKenna authored 61 published opinions for the court (2011–2018), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Bank of America, N.A. v. Reyes-Toledo. (71 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. 64 of these were attributed to McKenna 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
2018	Bank of America, N.A. v. Reyes-Toledo.†	143 Haw. 249	71
2012	State v. Nesmith†	276 P.3d 617	57
2013	Hawaiian Association of Seventh-Day Adventists v. Wong.†	130 Haw. 36	49
2017	U.S. Bank N.A. v. Mattos.†	140 Haw. 26	45
2013	Eastern Savings Bank, FSB v. Esteban.†	129 Haw. 154	42
2013	Siopes v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc..· Concurrence†	130 Haw. 437	38
2016	State v. Kazanas.†	138 Haw. 23	34
2016	Hamilton v. Hamilton.†	138 Haw. 185	32
2015	In re Arbitration of Nordic PCL Construction, Inc. v. LIPHGC, LLC†	136 Haw. 29	31
2016	Mount v. Apao.†	139 Haw. 167	27
2016	Waltrip v. TS Enterprises, Inc.†	140 Haw. 226	25
2014	State v. Pomroy.†	132 Haw. 85	24
2018	State v. Choy Foo.†	142 Haw. 65	22
2013	Nelson v. Hawaiian Homes Commission†	130 Haw. 162	21
2015	State v. Auld.†	136 Haw. 244	19

Showing the 15 most-cited of 64 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 Sabrina S. McKenna on?: Sabrina S. McKenna is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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15 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).