Rumors had been circulating for two months that Supreme Court Associate Justice Steven Levinson was retiring at the end of this year, and yesterday Levinson made it official.

"I've loved it, but you just get tired," he said in an interview, confirming that he will step down Dec. 31, seven years into his second 10-year term on the high court.

He will be honored at a luncheon next week at the Hawaii Bar Association's annual meeting.

Levinson said he had shared his plans with close friends and said there were other advance signs of his departure.

"I hired my clerks for an odd period, ending in December," he said. "Just this week I recused myself from hearing the Superferry case, when I had participated in the earlier case."

Levinson, 62, said he is financially secure and has no immediate plans other than "to relax, catch up on pleasure reading and maybe do some traveling."

The unexpected departure of Levinson gives Gov. Linda Lingle the opportunity to fill another vacancy on the state's five-member high court. She appointed James Duffy in 2003, and she is to still be in office in 2010 to name a replacement when Chief Justice Ronald Moon hits the mandatory retirement age of 70.

CITES MOON AS MENTOR

Levinson this morning called Moon "my oldest professional friend, my big brother, my role model, my mentor."

Moon "leaned on me pretty hard" to stay on the court, Levinson said, but in the end understood and acquiesced in the retirement decision.

He said his financial independence will allow him to pursue "pro bono" or voluntary legal work for causes of his choosing.

"Life is karmic. You never know what will drop out of the sky," he said.

Levinson said he's proudest of writing the ground-breaking legal opinion in 1993 that made Hawai'i the first state to recognize same-sex marriages.

He said he didn't think he had given the subject "a single thought" before the issue was raised in an appeal to the Supreme Court.

He recalled that in March 1992, when his nomination to the Supreme Court was being considered, then-state Sen. Ann Kobayashi (now a Honolulu mayoral candidate) asked him his views on "equal protection of the law for gay and lesbian couples."

Levinson said he now recalls thinking it was an "exotic question" to be asked but told Kobayashi that he favored equal protection for everyone.

Within four months of moving up to the high court, he said, a case dealing with the issue was docketed for appeal.

"I knew that this was an appeal that didn't come down the pike every day," Levinson said.

Moon at the time was the acting chief justice and assigned Levinson to write the opinion.

Now, he said, "I don't think I'm prouder of anything I've ever done. It changed the history of the world."

'IT'S TIME TO GO'

A constitutional amendment passed by Hawai'i voters in 1998 nullified the same-sex marriage decision, but Levinson's opinion has been cited around the country by other courts considering the issue.

Levinson graduated from Stanford University and earned his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School.

He worked in private practice here from 1972 to 1989, with a year off in 1982 to move to Wyoming to try his hand at writing a novel.

He said he thinks his days of writing fiction are over.

"I think I've outgrown it," he said. The last time he looked at the manuscript was in 1987, he said.

In 1989, Levinson was appointed a Circuit Court judge by Gov. John Waihee. He moved up to the the Supreme Court in 1992, winning a second 10-year term in 2002.

"I'm one of the luckiest men in the world," he said.

"I've loved this job, but it's time to go," Levinson continued.

"It's not as much fun as it used to be. The tank is kind of empty."