honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Saturday, March 29, 2003

Panel nominates 6 to fill Supreme Court vacancy

By Gordon Y.K. Pang and Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

Two Honolulu attorneys, including one previously nominated to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and four circuit judges are the six candidates submitted to Gov. Linda Lingle for her first selection to the Hawai'i Supreme Court.

CHUN-HOON

DUFFY

HIFO

MCKENNA

PERKINS

POLLACK
Lingle yesterday announced the names on the list handed to her by the Judicial Selection Commission, which screens candidates for appointment to the bench.

They are Honolulu lawyers James E. Duffy Jr. and Lowell Chun-Hoon and circuit judges Eden E. Hifo, Sabrina S. McKenna, Richard K. Perkins and Richard W. Pollack.

The selection is being closely watched because it will be the first made to the five-member state Supreme Court by a Republican governor in 40 years. It also gives Lingle a chance to pick a justice who comes closest in sharing her views that the court shouldn't take on the role of the Legislature by making new law.

Lingle has 30 days from the March 19 receipt of the list to make her selection, which is subject to confirmation by the Senate. She would be filling a vacancy created by the December retirement of Associate Justice Mario R. Ramil.

The release of the names is a break from past practice. Rarely has a governor made such lists public before the selection, if at all, but Lingle's office said she was releasing the names "in her continuing effort to maintain openness in her administration."

One prominent name on the list is Duffy, 60, a Honolulu attorney who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999 after his name was submitted by U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye. But the nomination stalled in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

When President George W. Bush took office, he pulled the nomination and instead chose Richard Clifton, a Hawai'i Republican Party attorney, a move that led Inouye and Sen. Daniel Akaka to try to block confirmation. Clifton was finally confirmed in July.

"I'm honored to be on the list," Duffy said yesterday.

While a protege and partner to the late Democratic power broker Wallace Fujiyama, Duffy reviewed operations at Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate in the early 1990s as a special master and concluded in a report that education had become a secondary priority to the estate's finances. Duffy is also a former president of the Hawai'i Bar Association.

Lenny Klompus, Lingle's senior communications adviser and Randy Roth, Lingle's senior policy adviser, yesterday said the candidates' political backgrounds will not factor into her decision. "She's not looking at this in political terms," Roth said.

Klompus said the governor does not know any of the nominees personally, but that "she wants somebody who's going to interpret the law in a fair way and doesn't make law."

Among the other contenders:

• Hifo, 53, formerly known as Bambi Weil, has presided over the highly-publicized cases, which included her decision to permanently remove then-Bishop Estate trustee Lokelani Lindsey in 1999. "I would say it's a great honor to be considered and to be amongst such qualified candidates," she said. "My family and I thank the commission for including my name on that list."

• McKenna, 45, was the judge who ruled in March 2002 that Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris needed to resign before continuing his campaign for governor. While Harris suspended his campaign, the Hawai'i Supreme Court overturned McKenna's ruling two months later. "I'm deeply honored and humbled to have been placed on a list by the Judicial Selection Commission," McKenna said yesterday.

• Perkins, 52, a former deputy public defender, has presided over high-profile criminal cases, including the murder case of William James Kotis, who shot and killed his wife in 1992. Perkins said he was happy with the nomination, "especially with the type of people who are also on it, but there's a long way to go."

• Pollack, 52, was appointed to the Circuit Court bench in 2000 and is best known as state public defender, a post he held dating back to 1987. As public defender, Pollack testified at the Legislature on a variety of issues. In 1999, he testified against a measure that would have allowed a person convicted of a felony sex crime for the third time to a sentence of life without parole, describing the measure as "draconian."

• Chun-Hoon, 53, a longtime labor attorney, is a partner in the law firm of King Nakamura & Chun-Hoon.

David Callies, a professor with the University of Hawai'i William S. Richardson School of Law, praised the commission for offering up to Lingle a list of hopefuls that represent a broad spectrum of the state's legal community.

He described Duffy as "a superb person as well as a superb lawyer" whose chances may or may not be hindered by the fact that Democrats had pushed hard for his Appeals Court nomination. "Then again, the governor has gone out of her way to ensure she is not appointing (other officials) on a partisan basis," Callies said.

"On the other hand, you have a whole slew who have judicial experience and judicial experience does count for something," he said. "It depends on what the governor is looking for."

Lingle's position that she would prefer to name to the court someone who would interpret the law rather than shape it is consistent with longstanding Republican policy, he said, and that could eventually change the composition of the court.

The current Supreme Court, he said, "likes to write long opinions and shift the law somewhat rather than simply decide on basis of what past principals might be."

Senate Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee Chairwoman Colleen Hanabusa, whose committee reviews judicial nominees, said she knows all the candidates and said any on the list would "make a good addition" to the court.

Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha), said whether the nominees are conservative or liberal does not matter as much as their philosophy of what the court's role is.

"It's going to determine as to whether they believe the court should be proactive or the court should be less policy-oriented in its decisions or not," she said. "I think that's more critical in terms of assessing them from our perspective than what their politics may or may not have been."

Frank Padgett, retired Hawai'i Supreme Court justice, pointed out that judicial appointees do not always make decisions that please the people who appoint them. He noted that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower regretted his appointment of Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court after Warren proved to be a liberal.

"It's a little like electing the pope, you really don't know what you're going to get when they get on there," said Padgett. "If you're the appointing authority, you have absolutely no way of knowing whether you're going to be pleased or not with their decisions."

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com or Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com. Or reach either at 525-8070.