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 2000 / Served to 2014

Simeon R. Acoba

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Simeon R. Acoba was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2000–2014 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Acoba authored 114 published opinions for the court (2000–2014), plus 59 dissents and 138 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Mainaaupo (220 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. 296 of these were attributed to Acoba 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
2008	State v. Mainaaupo· Concurrence†	178 P.3d 1	220
2003	Troyer v. Adams· Dissent†	77 P.3d 83	126
2003	Hac v. University of Hawai'i	73 P.3d 46	125
2005	Lingle v. Hawai'i Government Employees Ass'n, AFSCME, Local 152· Concurrence†	111 P.3d 587	121
2006	Hawaii Medical Ass'n v. Hawaii Medical Service Ass'n· Concurrence†	113 Haw. 77	120
2007	Association of Apartment Owners of Newtown Meadows Ex Rel. Board of Directors v. Venture 15, Inc.· Concurrence†	167 P.3d 225	105
2004	French v. Hawaii Pizza Hut, Inc.†	99 P.3d 1046	105
2002	Mr. & Mrs. Doe Parents No. 1 v. State, Department of Education· Concurrence†	58 P.3d 545	103
2005	Querubin v. Thronas· Dissent†	109 P.3d 689	102
2010	State v. Kalaola· Concurrence†	237 P.3d 1109	99
2008	Hamilton Ex Rel. Lethem v. Lethem· Concurrence†	193 P.3d 839	92
2007	Kaho'ohanohano v. State†	114 Haw. 302	91
2001	State v. Haanio†	16 P.3d 246	87
2007	Exotics Hawaii-Kona, Inc. v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co.· Dissent†	172 P.3d 1021	86
2012	Marvin v. Pflueger.· Concurrence†	127 Haw. 490	85

Showing the 15 most-cited of 311 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 Simeon R. Acoba on?: Simeon R. Acoba 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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14 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).