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 1974 / Served to 1981

Thomas S. Ogata

Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii

Thomas S. Ogata was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–1983
Tenure: 1974–1981 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Supreme Court of Hawaii	–	–

Education

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Judicial Record

In our data, Ogata authored 97 published opinions for the court (1974–1981), plus 7 dissents. Most cited: Au v. Au (115 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. 104 of these were attributed to Ogata 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
1981	Au v. Au†	626 P.2d 173	115
1980	Ono v. Applegate†	612 P.2d 533	105
1975	State v. Iaukea†	56 Haw. 343	83
1978	State v. Murphy†	575 P.2d 448	81
1981	State v. Melear†	630 P.2d 619	79
1979	Figueroa v. State†	61 Haw. 369	79
1980	State v. O'DANIEL†	616 P.2d 1383	71
1978	Turner v. Willis†	582 P.2d 710	68
1979	Application of Hawaii Elec. Light Co., Inc.†	594 P.2d 612	66
1975	Morneau v. Stark Enterprises, Ltd.†	539 P.2d 472	63
1979	State v. Fry†	602 P.2d 13	59
1977	State v. Patterson†	571 P.2d 745	57
1980	State v. Feliciano†	618 P.2d 306	56
1977	Schwab v. Ariyoshi†	564 P.2d 135	53
1974	State v. Park†	525 P.2d 586	52

Showing the 15 most-cited of 104 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 Thomas S. Ogata on?: Thomas S. Ogata 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.

7 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).