Senate Standing Committee on Judiciary

Okay. Welcome, everyone, to our Judiciary Committee informational briefing this Tuesday, September 15. My name is Karl Rhoads. I'm the Chair of the committee. I'm joined by Senator San Buenaventura, also a member of the committee.

This informational briefing is being streamed live on YouTube. You can find links to viewing options for all Senate hearings and meetings on the live and on-demand video page of the Legislature's website, which is www.capitol.hawaii.gov, capitol with an O. In the unlikely event that we must abruptly end the briefing due to major technical difficulties, if a future date can be arranged with the presenter, the committee will reconvene and a public notice will be posted on the Legislature's website.

Since this is an informational briefing, only the invited speaker will provide testimony to the committee. There will not be any public testimony, though members of the public are always welcome to contact our offices with their comments and concerns.

Senator San Buenaventura, I'll ask that we hold our questions until the end. My guideline is to keep the question and answer portion to about five minutes per member, but I may break that if it's still just the two of us at the end.

No. It'll take forever.

Briefing materials from today's presentation are linked from the briefing notice and will also be posted online at the Senate JDC Committee page. These can be accessed on the Legislature's website, which I mentioned before, capitol.hawaii.gov. Okay, now to, excuse me, the focus of the briefing. The concept of the rule of law is critical to the functioning of a democracy.

Rule of law has been defined as a durable system of laws, institutions, norms, and community commitments that delivers four universal principles: accountability, just law, open government, and accessible and impartial justice. This is the definition by the World Justice Project. The key feature is that there is a system in place to ensure that no one in the government has so much power that they can act above the law.

As a country, the rule of law is an ideal that we in the United States strive for and that relies on citizens respecting the law. Former United States Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter provided an insightful description of the rule of law in a 1947 decision.

There can be no free society without law administered through an independent judiciary. If one person can be allowed to determine for themselves what law is, every person can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process. And that's from United States v. United Mine Workers. It is essential that all of us have and demonstrate respect for the rule of law.

This is more than a theoretical concern, as we have unfortunately watched the current U.S. President mock judges and deride their decisions. He has threatened judges with impeachment for adverse rulings and taken steps through executive orders and policies to silence lawyers and law firms that have engaged in litigation against him and his administration. These actions raise questions about whether the President and his administration respect the rule of law.

We have invited the recently retired Chief Justice of the State of Hawaii Supreme Court, Mark Recktenwald, to explore how recent federal government actions are testing the rule of law, especially in the context of the judicial branch. Since his retirement last October, he has become active with a group of other retired state chief justices called the Alliance of Former Chief Justices, that is focused on the rule of law and the importance of upholding constitutional principles.

As a refresher for some of you anyway, Chief Justice Recktenwald retired after eighteen years of distinguished service in the judicial branch, the last fifteen of which were as Chief Justice.

His many accomplishments include championing, and my main accomplishment is I almost can speak English, championing the court's access to justice initiatives, such as establishing self-help centers that have helped more than 40,000 individuals with civil legal needs at no cost, and elevating the mental health needs of defendants and other criminally involved individuals.

He previously served in the state's executive branch as the Director of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, and as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Hawaii, as well as an attorney in private practice. Chief Justice, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Chair Rhoads, Senator San Buenaventura. I'm very grateful for this opportunity to appear before you today to talk about issues that have really occupied me almost full time since my retirement. And I became interested in these issues back during the time I was Chief Justice, but could only engage on them to a limited extent.

I was able to find other former chiefs who felt like I did, that it was important for us to unite and have a voice, and that's the Alliance of Former Chief Justices. And there are about 60 of us, and we've been speaking out, organizing events, you know, taking positions on particular issues.

And we're a nonpartisan group. We have folks who are appointed or elected both by Republicans and Democrats. And I view it as important that we not be here to advocate for a candidate or against a candidate as part of that group.

But I do want to say, I think that because of my position and because of my ability to understand and reflect on particular positions that are being taken that affect the judicial system and affect the rule of law, I feel I can speak out. And that's why I'm here today, and will share some of the thoughts I have with you.

So let me just, I'm going to challenge myself here with the clicker and we'll see if I can get off to a good start. There we go. Okay, I'm one for one. So the rule of law, I'll talk about that briefly, although I thought you did a great job.

I'm going to briefly mention a statement that was issued by the Hawaii Supreme Court back in March 2025, talk about challenges to the independence of lawyers, which I think is really important because we're in an adversarial system and, you know, the courts rely on lawyers to present cases to us. And so if lawyers are not willing or somehow chilled from taking on tough cases, that undercuts the ability of the judiciary to do its job.

I'm going to talk about challenges to the independence of the judiciary, a little bit about challenges to the election process, because that's what lies ahead of us over the next two months, and the role of the judiciary in resolving those disputes.

And to me, and I guess just one takeaway from my remarks today, it's that we have a judiciary here and across the nation that is dedicated to and has the processes set up to get to the right result, to be fair to everyone who appears before them, to be able to get information, give everyone their day in court, and then ultimately to make a ruling.

Folks may or may not agree with that ruling, but the system itself is worthy of trust. And I think the reason why that's so important is clearly there is going to be a number of issues related to elections that are going to come to the courts.

So that's why I think it's so important for me and other former chiefs to talk to folks about why the judicial process is something that's worthy of their trust, so that when these issues that are essential to our democracy come up in the coming months, folks will understand that we have a process through the judiciary that they can trust and have confidence in. So that's my primary reason for being here today.

I'll note I have with me, we have a nonprofit educational organization called Keep Our Republic that supports our work as well as that of a group of former federal judges.

And I have with me today Claire Kelly from that group, who happened to be in Hawaii on vacation. And I asked her to come and just be able to see this very important event today. So Claire's here with me. So really quickly, I'll talk about the rule of law. A lot of different definitions, I learned about this.

I taught a class up at the law school in the spring, and so I sort of dove in on what is the rule of law. And there are a lot of different definitions. I like this Massachusetts, you know, these folks back in 1780, they were pretty smart: a government of laws, not of men. And the other thing I like about the preamble, this is the Massachusetts Constitution, is it's sort of looking at all three branches of government, an equitable mode of making laws.

So making the laws in a way that's fair, impartial interpretation of them, that's the judiciary, and faithful execution of them. So sort of focusing on all three branches of government and the duty of all three branches to have a process that's fair, that everyone has their day to be able to assert their positions, and then have a regular, impartial, fair way of being able to adjudicate any disputes. I know you mentioned, Chair, the World Justice Project definition, focuses on accountability.

I think that's really important because it talks about the government being accountable. I think that's a really critical distinction.

Talks about the law being clear, publicized, stable, applied evenly. So it doesn't matter who you are, whether you're rich or poor, popular or not, the law is going to be applied to you in a manner that's fair. I like this definition too, because it emphasizes human rights as well as other types of rights, and talks about adjudication that's administered, or the law is being adopted, administered, adjudicated, enforced in a manner that's accessible, fair, and efficient.

And that the folks who are deciding cases, judges, are competent, ethical, and independent, and neutral, and accessible. They have the resources they need, and they reflect the communities they serve.

So I think that's a good working definition. Just a little bit of history: early on in the new administration's tenure, we at the Hawaii Supreme Court realized that there were a lot of issues coming up that affected the rule of law, or that the perception could be that the rule of law might be in some ways changing or being challenged.

And so we issued a statement, signed by all five of us, emphasizing that our goal and our commitment is to ensure the promise of equal justice for all, uphold the rule of law, that we have worked to eliminate bias in our own organization. We work with community partners to address inequities and provide for the fair administration of justice.

And this is a reference to the work we did after the murder of George Floyd, when we had a series of public events.

At that time, they were by Zoom, talking about, how can we make our system better? How can we make it more fair? Where are we coming up short, from a variety of perspectives? So we acknowledged that and then said, we want to have a judiciary that has the most qualified judges and staff who reflect the community they serve, so that everyone, when they come into our courts, knows their voices will be heard and their disputes will be resolved fairly.

They'll have that element of confidence. So I'm going to shift gears now and talk a little bit about the legal profession. So that, again, I mentioned that earlier, that's an important piece of what's going on with the courts. And just as a way of background, Hawaii Rule of Professional Conduct 2.1: in representing a client, a lawyer shall exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice.

And that's echoed in Rule 1.7, that talks about a lawyer should not be, their advice to their clients should not be hampered or affected materially by a personal interest that they might have. I think that's an important piece of background to talk about some of the issues that have been going on with the legal profession on a national level. So in March 2025, there were executive orders entered by the President against a number of large law firms, about six.

These are national law firms, multibillion dollar entities. And the executive orders had some reasons and made some statements that global law firms have, for years, played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and the destruction of bedrock American principles.

So pretty hard hitting, I guess you would say, indictment of sort of the folks who are the largest and most public in our nation in the legal profession. There were specific reasons given: hiring certain attorneys.

So Robert Mueller, people who worked for Robert Mueller, the fact that those attorneys have been hired or associated with a particular firm was identified as a reason for taking actions towards that firm, which I'll get to in a moment; taking certain positions in litigation, including election litigation; and supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion policy. So those are the three main reasons that were given in these executive orders.

They varied a little bit, but what the executive orders said, there were possible sanctions. And this has been raised, like, well, no one said these are necessarily going to happen, but various entities within the government were told to review these issues, whether the attorneys in these firms should have their security clearances revoked or they should have access to government buildings.

Really big deal if you're a national law firm that's doing national security work, or in any law firm engaging with the government, not to be able to enter a government building. And the loss of clients' federal contracts on which the firms have provided work, obviously of grave concern to a firm if there's going to be an impact on clients. So eventually four firms sued to invalidate the executive orders and nine firms settled. That's kind of, and then a number of other firms. Oh, I'm so sorry.

Pardon me. A number of other firms just kind of were out there, sort of in the middle, and I think it kind of, like, keeping their heads down and waiting to see how it all played out. So among the nine firms that settled is a total commitment of nearly $100,000,000 in pro bono services to causes approved by the administration.

And those causes, you know, there's nothing wrong with those causes, but they are the causes that the administration said it wanted to see firms work on. One of the firms is Paul Weiss.

And just to give you a flavor for what these orders look like, and this actually is not the original order, this is an order announcing the settlement. So announcing the firm will be adopting a policy of political neutrality with respect to client selection and attorney hiring.

And I'm not sure what that looks like, but I guess the idea is that you'll have attorneys in your firm and clients who represent a variety of perspectives, which is not something that law firms, I think, typically understand to be their ethical duty. Wide range of pro bono matters representing the full political spectrum, dedicating the equivalent of $40,000,000 to them, and then committing to merit based hiring, promotion, and retention instead of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

So that was a commentary about the Paul Weiss firm, which was highlighted, and it's a very, there was a very good New York Times story about Paul Weiss, I believe this summer, that sort of went through all that went into the process of Paul Weiss deciding to settle with the government.

It is a firm that had been known, I think, as a progressive firm that stood up for civil rights, and there was a lot of controversy within that firm about whether that was the right thing to do or not. I just wanted to share this. You know, there's been some really good judicial writing by folks who are considering the various issues that have come up.

And this one here, the four firms that fought, they all had lawsuits seeking to enjoin the government from doing what it wanted to do.

And in this particular case, one of those firms, Perkins Coie, got summary judgment from the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. And what that judge said is, no American president has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit, targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all executive branch agencies.

But in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase, the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. And then the second paragraph here talks about sort of the fact that, from a viewpoint of free speech, and there are a lot of different constitutional issues raised by these executive orders.

One is the speech interests of the lawyers in the law firm. The others are the representational interests of the clients. You know, the point is there should be tolerance of other views under the First Amendment.

These lawsuits are pending now in the D.C. Circuit. All four of the law firms won in the district court. There are amicus briefs filed on both sides. I'll just disclose, I was a member of a group of 279 former judges that filed the brief.

Our brief basically said this undermines the rule of law by threatening the independence of lawyers and litigants to petition courts. It cites the rule that I mentioned earlier, Rule 2.1. So the notion that if you're pulling your punches because you're worried about government retribution, that is potentially violating an ethical responsibility of lawyers to take on all cases.

Whether they're, or to take on cases that they deem appropriate, whether popular or not. The government said, in essence, this is about lower courts encroaching on the constitutional power of the President to discuss and address invidious racial discrimination, national security risks, and other problems involving these firms. There's a grassroots movement by lawyers to commit to basically not give in in the way that the firms that settled did, called the Principles for the Independence of the Legal Profession.

A lot of folks have endorsed that. Most recently, the American Bar Association, in its annual meeting, endorsed it, as well as the Alliance that I'm a part of.

So that's something that lawyers are trying to get other lawyers to say, hey, we are going to stand up for our right to represent who we deem appropriate to represent, to make arguments that we deem appropriate to make under the rules of professional conduct, and to express our support for certain positions, such as that of equal opportunity. So this, I mentioned earlier my own involvement.

Eventually, after I retired, which was at the beginning of October of last year, I found that other former chiefs were interested in coming together to be able to advocate as a group. And I think collective action is super important in this context. So we issued a statement in December 2025, basically saying, you know, it's absolutely fine to say that judges have it totally wrong.

Their reasoning is wrong. The outcome is wrong. That's part of legitimate public discourse. But what's not legitimate is to suggest that we're just politicians in robes, that we're here trying to pursue partisan purposes. That's not what judges do. And I hope I'll be able to share more about that in a moment.

So that's our oath. You know, we're here to dispense equal justice without regard to who you are, power, position, background, social standing, and certainly without politics. So we now have 60 members, which is a fair number of folks, and we're supported by Keep Our Republic, which I mentioned earlier. I want to talk a little bit about now, so I've talked about the law firms, and I'm going to talk about challenges to the November election.

So in his prime time address back in July, and I watched this with great interest because the President had sort of telegraphed that he was going to talk about election related issues. And he talked a lot about them, and a lot of them related to issues that came up in 2020, possibilities of foreign influence and the like. He said something that really struck me, which is, our election system is so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it.

You know, this is the head of our democracy, and that's his view of where we're at. So that certainly has caused me to want to focus more on what's happening with the electoral process and to understand the nature of the challenges that might come up.

So I'll be in a position as a former judge to be able to speak out. You know, I see a lot of comments being made along the lines that sort of cross the line of the distinction I mentioned earlier. Judge Boasberg, the chief judge of the District of Columbia District Court, was characterized by the President as a radical left lunatic, troublemaker, agitator who should be impeached.

And I think it is very significant that same day, Chief Justice Roberts issued a statement in which he said, impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement with the ruling. The normal appellate process exists for that purpose.

So it was a very understated response, but I think it was important for judges across the country because the Chief Justice, without mentioning the President by name, engaged with the substance of what the President was saying, which is, hey, I don't like this ruling, so this person should be impeached. And the Chief Justice spoke and basically emphasized what's been the practice in our country for two hundred years, which is you should appeal if you think something is wrong with the ruling.

Just to share, you know, J.D. Vance said something to the effect of, judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. Stephen Miller called adverse court decisions an insurrection against the laws and constitution of the United States. And at that time, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said it's a war that we must keep fighting.

Two more examples. One is after the tariff case, where the President described the judges as fools and lapdogs, and said that, you know, Justices Gorsuch and Coney Barrett were an embarrassment to their families. Again, here, Chief Justice Roberts issued a statement. And by the way, it's very unusual for the Chief Justice to issue public statements that react to events in this way. He said personally directed hostility is dangerous.

It's got to stop. But he said it does come from all over, I believe meaning from different political perspectives. And to be fair, he issued a statement condemning something that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had said back around 2019 related to a pending case, where the Chief Justice had issued a statement condemning what the Majority Leader had said.

Just yesterday, I guess yesterday or this overnight, the President, talking about the mail ballot ruling, said, these are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

They're a mere shell of their former selves who've been bullied and controlled by the radical left. So that's literally hot off the presses, I guess, from this morning.

I want to emphasize that, you know, there's an effect of these kinds of comments and the sort of demonization on a personal level of particular judges, which I think is very corrosive to the process, both in terms of causing people to disrespect the process, faith and confidence, and also from the standpoint of legitimate concerns about security. So the federal judge in Rhode Island, you know, had 400 threatening calls, six credible death threats.

And this is, you know, something that I really, I think, struck me. Pizza was delivered to his house in the name of a judge's son who was shot to death by an aggrieved attorney. So Judge McConnell didn't order the pizza. It showed up at his door and it had the name of Daniel Anderl on it, who was shot to death in the home that he shared with his mother, who's a federal court judge in New Jersey. And his father, he had the misfortune of opening the door, and he and his father were both shot and he died.

So this pizza shows up in that name, which I think is a very clear indication. We know where you live. That's the message. District judge in Washington state, same thing, lots of death threats after he ruled on a matter involving birthright citizenship, false emergency reports, bomb threats to his home. I want to shift gears now, more generally, to what we see coming up with the elections.

And I'm not here to express opinions one way or the other about these issues, but I just want to flag them because I think they set the context for my remarks, which are, there are going to be a lot of ways in which judges and the judiciary are called to step in and resolve disputes.

And it's important that folks have confidence that the judicial system is fair, impartial, and it's going to do everything in its power to get it right. I think it's generally accepted that states have the primary responsibility for administering federal elections. Time, place, and manner are for the states to dictate, but Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations. One branch of government you're not seeing in that provision, which I guess typically is referred to as the Elections Clause, is the President.

There's nothing in there about the President, you know, having the power to do anything about elections, although the President generally has the power to faithfully implement laws, but those are laws that are on the books.

So what are some of the challenges that we're seeing, just to, again, hopefully give people sort of a scope of what might be out there. And I really do want to alert people in Hawaii that, you know, although a lot of this may seem distant, it's going to affect us here in some ways. There are some of the matters that we're talking about that explicitly refer to Hawaii, and Hawaii is involved in litigation.

But even if the end result is that people here conclude, hey, this process is not worthy of my trust, I'm not going to vote, or somehow feel threatened about voting, or if the results of the election are not accepted on the national level, it's going to have real implications for us here.

So, and I'm not going to dwell on this because it was blocked by an order of the Supreme Court. There was an executive order entered by the President related to mail in voting in March, and the United States Postal Service in August did a rulemaking. And it's fairly complicated, which is kind of the point.

It's fairly complicated, and we're only two months out from the election, which I think is what the majority of the Supreme Court saw, although it's a very, very brief order. But, you know, uploading lists of voters to the United States Postal Service, to an as yet undeployed website, and then the Postal Service would review ballots that would subsequently be submitted for mailing against that list of voters.

And if they didn't match, would be able to reject the ballots, including, if they were batched and there was one in that batch that wasn't compliant, the whole batch could be returned back. So just yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to intervene, meaning the lower court order blocking the implementation of those rules stays in place. And now I'm just going to cover a couple of the different issues that have come up that are of concern. The presence of armed federal agents at the polls.

This is something that has been raised by some observers.

Steve Bannon told his podcast that, you know, up-armored ICE presence should be at these polling booths. And, you know, federal law makes it a felony to station armed troops or agents at a polling place. There is an exception for repelling armed enemies of the United States. And there were some incidents in Wyoming during a recent, I guess it was a primary election, of Department of Justice attorneys who were there, and the state's Republican governor reported their activities to be aggressive and irregular.

They wanted to look at voting machines, according to him, which he felt very strongly was not something that was appropriate.

Another issue is search warrants seeking election materials while the election is still pending. Super important, because there's a very elaborate chain of custody over, you know, votes and voting machines and equipment. And the whole point of that is to be able for the public to have confidence that they have not been messed with during the course of the process, that somebody is watching them all along the way.

So that up to the time when the election is certified by state or local officials, we will all know that these are the materials that were, this is how people voted, this is how the machines, with nothing having been done to them.

And that chain of custody has been maintained. So the real issue with search warrants is if law enforcement comes in to a judge and says, hey, we have allegations that have been raised to us that we think raise probable cause that a crime is occurring, and we want to recover all this equipment, and there's a real risk that that's going to upset the chain of custody in a way that could really undercut the validity of the elections.

There are other intermediate steps that judges could take, which I mentioned in the slide, and that's certainly something that people are advocating for. Declaration of an emergency. You know, the President was asked about it in this last month relating to, I'm sorry, declaration of an emergency relating to elections.

He said stranger things have happened. There are a number of statutes which provide emergency powers. At least one law professor has said that in his view, none of them would allow the President to nationalize elections or otherwise significantly intervene. Refusal to certify election results or defiance of results. These are some of the issues that have taken place in other jurisdictions where the commissioners just said, we're not going to certify these, and the election goes uncertified.

And then in California, this is relatively recent, the mayor and three council members just said, hey, we're not leaving our offices, until somebody actually went to court and got an order saying, yeah, you need to leave your office. But they basically said, no, we don't think it was a legit election, we're not going anywhere. Super important to educate people about the rule of law and the role of courts.

Sitting judges are limited in what they can say. They can speak generally about the law and the legal system, legal process. They can't talk about pending or impending cases. They can't engage in partisan activity, except in those states where they run for office, with regard to their own election. That's why my group, the former federal judges group, have gotten involved.

And in some states, lawyers are organizing groups to support the rule of law. That's happening in Georgia. It's happening in Ohio. And that's certainly something I've talked to some folks about here too, whether we need that voice of attorneys to really focus on this issue.

Bottom line, in my view, and the message that we need to share over and over and over again, especially given everything that's been happening, is people can trust in the courts to fairly and impartially resolve the disputes that arise in the electoral process.

This is part of what my group and others have done, is to try to get out there and have judges and former judges engage with the public. So there was a Justice in Motion bus tour in July 2026. Got a huge amount of national coverage, front page of USA Today, multiple stories in the Washington Post. People really related to seeing judges come out and engage with them. And this is the Post story: cracker barrels, town squares, you name it.

The judges came and ate barbecue and worried crowds about threats to judges and a tide of criticism from election officials. So this is, again, former judges standing up and speaking out. And in this case, some current judges did too. And I will say current judges have been speaking out about the threats. So thank you again for allowing me.

I hope I didn't go too long. And happy Constitution Day. We have a couple of events coming up that'll really be of interest. One is at the Judiciary History Center tomorrow at 5:30. The other is at Punahou School.

It's a Civil Beat Civil Cafe that'll really be focused on the local elections. That's Thursday at 5:30. So there's a lot going on, and nothing but respect and thanks for other folks who are working on this issue. And I'd be happy to take your questions.

Great. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for coming in, and you opened up, there's so many questions that come to mind, so we'll delve into some of those. But I first just want to note that I knew September seventeenth was Constitution Day because my father was born on the sesquicentennial of Constitution Day in 1937. I will defer first to Senator San Buenaventura.

Hi, Senator.

Go ahead.

Okay, thank you, Chief Justice, for coming to us today. I don't know if you can answer this question, but it's something that's been, and I'm really glad that you talked about the election and the recent action by the U.S. Supreme Court in not overturning the lower court ruling blocking the new rules. But what can we in the state legislature do when the feds refuse to follow the rule of law?

Okay, thank you, Chief Justice, for coming to us today. I don't know if you can answer this question, but it's something that's been, and I'm really glad that you talked about the election and the recent action by the U.S. Supreme Court in not overturning the lower court ruling blocking the new rules. But what can we in the state legislature do when the feds refuse to follow the rule of law?

So my concern is, you know, what happened in Abrego Garcia, right, which is basically, federal court said, you folks deported the wrong, I mean, you should not have deported him.

So my concern is, you know, what happened in Abrego Garcia, right, which is basically, federal court said, you folks deported the wrong, I mean, you should not have deported him.

You should not have deported him; they deported him anyway. I don't think US marshals were able to stop the deportation, and my concern, I guess, in the state of Hawaii happening in November, is that USPS will not mail out the ballots regardless of what the US Supreme Court and the lower court have done.

Other than we as citizens, actually going to the voter service centers, which is what Senator Rhodes has suggested early on in just lining up and voting. What can we do to enforce the rule of law when the enforcers of the rule of law refuse to enforce it, for lack of a better term?

I think that in my mind, the immediate thing that would happen is that the states where that is taking place, including Hawaii, would go to court immediately to seek an injunction or further order from the court directing the Postal Service to deliver those ballots.

If we're at a point where agencies of the Federal Government are literally defying court orders, especially something that's this fundamental, then we're really in a very difficult place.

Sort of my view has been to try to support the rule of law and have enough folks out there understanding what it is and why it's important that we won't get there to that point, because that's exactly that's exactly right. What happens? What do you do?

I will say that although at various times, the administration has questioned whether it would follow judicial rulings, and there have been times, and judge Boseberg was involved, in that case that I mentioned earlier, where the thought was that although he had ordered that the flights to El Salvador not depart, they departed anyway.

He's involved in, and this is another matter that I submitted amicus brief on. He's still trying to get to, although ultimately the ruling that came down from the appellate courts was that he could not hold that-, what he had ordered in that case, he didn't have the power to do because the case should have been brought in Texas where the individuals were.

So, in that sense, I think the ruling by the US Supreme Court was, 'hey, You just don't have power to do this, in this case'.

When the case came back down, he said, in essence, okay, but I'm still going to find out and I'm still going to drill down on whether the administration knowingly and willfully ignored my orders, and so that's something that he's been doing, trying to do. I think we're now at the point of that going back up to the DC Circuit.

I think it's important that, you know, in various ways, some small, some big, there's an element of accountability when officials ignore the rulings of the court, and it's just really important to hammer home the message that, that's a fundamental aspect of our rule, of our justice system.

That's what worries me, is if we get to a point where, because of all these attacks on the judiciary, people are like, yeah, they're all just politicians. I don't believe them. I don't think they're credible. I don't believe judge-, I don't trust these judges.

Okay. Well, where are we then? Then we're just like, whoever has the most power to pull it off, whatever it is that they want to do, that's what's going to happen. That's not what democracy is about and that's not what our democracy should be about. So, I think your concerns are well founded.

I hope it won't come to that, but we should all be on guard.

Thank you very much.

So, you've bought about a year out from being a chief justice. Are there actions that you think that the State Judiciary needs to take to shore up adherence, to the rule of law at the at the state level, since that's the that's the organization that you led for all those years?

I mean, I think the judiciary is continuing all of the efforts that we had engaged in to go out and be in part, more engaged with the community.

So, our courts in the community program, where we did oral arguments at various places, including in Hilo twice, and across the state where we actually get out, let people see the court, see us in action.

Hear the arguments in their own community and then be able to have students ask questions of the justices, not about the case, but about the rule of law. How they became judges and justices and how they prepare for cases.

All of those things help us help people to understand, what the rule of law is, which is a very abstract concept, but it's basically fundamental fairness, and the best example I can think of, we went to Farrington High School. It was our very first one of these arguments back in 2012.

It was a criminal case in which somebody was accused of stealing tools at the middle of the night. They were found by police in a, like, lying face down in a drainage ditch, taken from that ditch.

Then the police drove by somebody who had seen the incident and asked if that person recognized who they saw, and so, the whole issue was whether that was an overly suggestive identification. But the thing that really struck me is we asked really tough questions during that argument as we often do.

Afterwards, one of the students came up to me and said, you know, I was really surprised that you asked the government really hard questions, and what I understood that person to be saying is, we figured because it's the government, it's the state of Hawaii, we would just defer to what they said and say, yeah, this is all good, not a problem.

But we took it as, we have to look and ask hard questions on both sides. So, to me, you get out there, you engage with people, that's really important. I think there are issues for the legislature to consider going forward.

I know there are some initiatives in other states to impose liability for messing with ballots, for coming and seizing ballots. I think California has, a lot of that effect, recently enacted. There also are proposals to have what they call state Bivens actions, so state law causes of action for damages for violations of civil rights.

So, there are some things that other legislatures are doing, and I think I would commend them to the Hawaii legislature to look at, see if they might, maybe they're not suited for us but they're certainly worth a look.

So, in terms of sort of taking it off on a little bit of a different tangent. So, in terms of when a trial court judge, well, I guess it could be any level. But typically, a trial court judge makes an order. I'm looking at the enforcement mechanism. Are there ways to make the enforcement mechanism, stronger, I guess, is the right word?

I mean, what's the typical process? If somebody's house gets foreclosed on, eventually a sheriff will go out and seize the house. Is there additional measures that need to be taken at the state level, to be sure that orders of the court are taken seriously and enforced?

It's a great question. There's a famous, saying, about the federal judiciary, "neither the sword nor the purse". So, we don't control the money like the legislature or Congress does. We don't control the forces of the military, or the police, although we do have the sheriffs as part of the judiciary.

So, it is customary for them to serve certain orders, in certain cases, to be involved in evictions. But those are relatively limited engagements and powers.

To me, I think the biggest, you know, the things that really jumped out at me when I was watching all this unfold, one was holding the lawyers who are engaging in, or representing the government in these cases, if indeed there's a suggestion that they misled the court, holding them accountable for those actions through, you know, just a potential disciplinary action.

That's something that I think has happened in various places, and it was another complaint that I signed on to involving, I believe, it's general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security who's issued a series of very personal, negative, messages about judge's ruling in cases involving deportation.

He posted a worst of the worst list, you know, the district court edition, and to me, it crossed the line. I'm not somebody who's, you know, always looking or, you know, particularly looking to, have people referred for disciplinary action.

So, I thought really long and hard about it. But when I read those comments, I thought they crossed the line into inciting or sort of dog whistling, for people to be angry and do something.

So, for the nonlawyers who are listening, who is it actually? Who determines who the lawyers are? Who determines who's inside, who gets to come inside the bar, which is to get into the courtroom?

It's a fantastic, it's a great question. So, across the nation, lawyers are licensed by states or territories, and each state, including Hawaii, has a disciplinary process that's ultimately results in action by the State Supreme Court.

So, if someone is going to be disbarred in Hawaii or suspended, ultimately that goes through the State Supreme Court, and that includes federal lawyers.

Another good question. Is there a federal bar in the same way that there's state bars?

Well, there are federal there are people who are admitted to particular federal courts. Often, you know, there sometimes will be proceedings involving discipline at those courts, but there's generally, I think, a respect between the state court and the federal court.

But there's no federal bar exam that you take.

There absolutely is not.

So, it's all ultimately, whether you're a lawyer or not, depends on what your standing is with a particular state bar.

What's happened at the federal at the national level is the Department of Justice has been attempting to, both through a rule making and through direct actions in the courts to suggest that when it's a Department of Justice lawyer, they should not be subject to that disciplinary process or they should first be required to be evaluated by Federal Government authorities.

There is an office of professional responsibility that the Federal Government, DOJ has, and the thought is like, 'Hey, we can do it. We can handle this. States should not be sticking their nose in this area.'

Well, the fact is states have been sticking their nose in this area for two hundred plus years, and so that was something that I actually wrote Op-eds about, editorial pieces about, that ran in different publications nationally because I felt very strongly as a former assistant US attorney, and as a former chief justice, that you cannot allow the Department of Justice to police its own.

I think it's great that they exert authority or that they try to make sure they have honorable, ethical people working for them. But when it comes to the point of, are we going to discipline this lawyer or not, I think we should stick with the system we have, which is each state should assess whether a particular lawyer has violated the ethical rules or not.

So, I will ask one more question. I'll turn it back to, Senator San Buenaventura.

So, if say the lawyer was licensed in Virginia and then they applied for the Federal Eastern Circuit of Virginia, which I think is still known as the rocket docket. If Virginia disbarred the person, the federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia could say, 'you can't come on my court' because I mean, this is a question.

You can't come on my court because you're not licensed to practice in the one jurisdiction where you passed the bar.

Right. Now, typically, states, you know, there'll be a further proceeding in the state where that lawyer is actually-, it's a little bit of a tough question.

So, for states, if somebody is disbarred in California and they're practicing here, typically our disciplinary counsel will come to us, a Hawaii Supreme Court, and say, 'hey, this person, was disbarred, and under our sort of notion of reciprocity and the fact that we typically will adopt similar discipline, that other states have adopted, we'll issue in order to show cost to that lawyer'.

Now it gets a little trickier, for federal lawyers, but I think the bottom line is, as I understand the law now, you as a federal lawyer have to be in good standing in some state, somewhere.

Yeah. I agree with that. So, yeah, it's more complicated if you're a member of three state bars, but if you are just a member of the Virginia Bar and you were trying to practice in federal court in Virginia, the federal judge could-.

I think that's right, and they may say, well, I'm entitled to a hearing. I'm entitled to due process. But I believe, and this is my just my opinion. The federal judge could say, you know what sir, or ma'am, 'what jurisdiction are you currently in good standing in?'. 'Well, I'm not, but I'm appealing'.

'Okay. Well, you're not currently a lawyer in good standing, and I believe this is a matter of federal statute, that you need to be in good standing in some bar'. So, I think the court, the judge could say, 'you're not allowed to come'. Where this came up, it's a very interesting case.

It relates to, I guess, sort of the closing days of the first Trump administration after the election. There was an official in the Department of Justice who felt very strongly that the election was rigged, and although the attorney general and the deputy attorney general engaged with this person and said, okay, what's your evidence? Why are why are you saying these things?

And shared with that person all the evidence on the other side, that the election had integrity and that Joe Biden should be the next president, and President Trump had not articulated a legitimate grievance, and of course, there were, like, 60 lawsuits across the country.

This individual kept proceeding and kept trying to advance that theory in a way that ultimately, the theory of the discipline against them was knowingly pursued, despite knowing that there was no basis for it. So, that person was subject to disciplinary proceedings in the District of Columbia.

Ultimately the District of Columbia, decided the bar. So, the bar authorities, not the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, decided that that they should be disbarred. So, at that point the matter moved to federal court, and that's where a lot of these issues are playing out.

I said I was going to turn over to the senators. One follow-up question. Can you tell us the name of that person?

I should be able to know it and I can find it.

there were several people that were sort of in that same grouping and I think some of them got disbarred like I think Rudy Giuliani was eventually disbarred.

Right, and so there were some. This individual is at DOJ and I can find it. I'll let the committee know. It's been a while since I looked at the case, but you know, he has arguments on his side and that initially there was a hearing committee convene that said, 'yeah, he should get a two-year suspension'.

It went to the full disciplinary board, and they said, no, this is important enough and significant enough. He should be disbarred. Ordinarily, the next step is it would go to the district of Columbia court of appeals, the equivalent of the Hawaii Supreme Court, but sort of short circuiting that, I think the DOJ filed a suit in federal district court.

So, those are all, but you know, again, it's the point is that there is some accountability. You can disagree with the outcome. You can say, I don't think you should have there should have been a case brought, or you can say two years sounds like plenty, or two years doesn't sound like enough, but at least there's a process.

Thank you. So, I want to go back to the elections issue, because this is the public, and, what's basic for us lawyers may not be basic to the public. We have a lower court ruling in another jurisdiction, not Hawaii, that basically said that they are not going to, that blocked the USPS's rules.

Correct. Right. So the question is, how could a federal court in another jurisdiction affect Hawaii's election?

Well, again, it's a really good question because there have been recent a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, that sort of cut back on the notion of orders applying across the country. But I think a lot of these cases, they were multiparty cases brought in a particular district.

So, you actually had other states that were parties to the litigation, and this case, I believe was in Massachusetts. I think there was 20 plus states that were all plaintiffs. It gets really complicated, but there was one case brought by the League of Women Voters, another brought by, or against a number of states including Hawaii.

So, I believe that in that particular case, we were actually a party to the case. So, that kind of took away. So, in that sense we had our day in court and in fact, we prevailed in the district court.

What had happened in that case is initially, it went up to the US Supreme Court, before the postal services rules had been enacted, and the Supreme Court said, 'oh, this is all very preliminary, we're not going to, we don't rule on hypotheticals'. This is just not real yet.

The three dissenters, said, 'no, it actually is real because you have all kinds of stuff in the record from elections officials saying, 'hey, we have to be mindful of what's happening'.

We're putting resources into being able to comply. So, this is a very real dispute. Whatever you think about that outcome, within a day or that very day, the rules came out. So, at that point, there was no doubt that there was a present injury, and fortunately, all of this came through very quickly, and ended up in the Supreme Court and was just resolved yesterday.

So, because Hawaii was a party.

I believe so.

Okay. I'm not sure about that. But I also do know my memory, and maybe it's because I haven't been practicing actively, but there was no determination that it was a multi-state litigation. Unlike, because I was involved in a civil multi-state litigation where it would have affected the entire country. I don't think that case was.

So, my question then is follow-up. Because there was that Supreme Court ruling that basically limited the jurisdiction in federal, because it used to be whatever a federal court says applied throughout the entire country, and then US Supreme Court said, 'no, you're limited'.

Would another case, and I'm hoping that this doesn't happen, but it's out there. In a lower court with suppose a libertarian party, then challenge and file a district court case, seeking the imposition or injunction, for lack of better term, to require the USPS to follow through. Would that be because they're both lower court.

Should the US District Court and the State of Hawaii decide, yeah, based upon these facts, it seems to me that the USPS in the State of Hawaii should comply with its own rules and not deliver ballots without having the voter registration provided to them?

I mean, what would happen in that scenario? And suppose the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which I don't think will happen, but suppose the ninth circuit court of appeals agree, then you'll have two lower court rulings completely. What happens?

Well, that's a tough you know, I think that there's a lot of effort placed into not having that happen. It sort of just happened in Missouri, and I'm not a particular, and this relates to the alleged gerrymandering of districts in Missouri, where you had a federal court kind of going one way and the state Supreme Court going another way.

My understanding is, that the US Supreme Court, in essence, aligned with the state Supreme Court. Again, that's not a case I've looked at. So take what I just said with a grain of salt.

But that was something, at least when I saw that, it seemed to me that there was a sense, like, we really can't have different courts going off in different directions and providing conflicting guidance in this area. But I will say I found the complaint from Massachusetts, and Hawaii was one of the states. So, this is the case that was literally filed just, like three weeks ago.

So, as soon as the US Supreme Court said, 'oh, no standing in the original case', and then the rules came out, immediately, this coalition of states, including Hawaii, went into that same district court in Boston and said, 'hey, these rules are problematic for the following reasons' and sought to have them blocked, and the court there issued that ruling.

So, I think it's not an insignificant concern to have, potentially conflicting signals being sent to voters, and it's certainly not impossible that you could have multiple district courts, ruling in a particular way. But I think that by having the states join together as parties, that reduces that risk a little bit.

The other thing that I would just say is what I've observed, and this is to me a relatively recent development as parties are really, you know, sort of like going right to the Supreme Court.

That's become more normalized in ways that I don't think it had been so much before, you used to have to kind of march your way up to the court of appeals, go there, present your case, get a ruling, go to the US Supreme Court. But what's happened, and this is the so-called shadow or emergency docket has become much more heavily utilized.

Some folks, I think, see that as very problematic. But, in this particular case, we were able to get a quick resolution on this issue. Now there are other issues out there still lurking related to voting materials. I believe there is litigation, requiring states to share very detailed voter information, in which Hawaii is a defendant.

That case was stayed because if my understanding is there are other, essentially the same ruling has come up and is currently pending in the courts of appeal in different locations, including I think in the Ninth Circuit.

So, and that's the issue where, if I understand correctly, it's been 0 and 23 for the administration. The notion that states have to share highly detailed information about voters, with the Federal Government, for enforcement purposes.

So again, that kind of runs into the elections clause, which says, 'hey, states are primarily responsible for administering elections', and who's to say, I suppose if Congress passed a law to that effect, there'd probably be other arguments about it.

But the problem here is it's an executive order telling states you need to cough up this information, and the information that they're going to have to produce is highly personal and individualized.

I believe it includes social security numbers, and that's something the states have really pushed back against. But great question. I think what I have seen is that generally courts understand that having inconsistent rulings is particularly problematic in this area. So, it looks to me like-, and credit to them, the US Supreme Court ruled quickly in this matter that we've been discussing.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go back to these, you did several slides on these, what's commonly referred to as big law, big law firms. I admit to having sort of mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, the executive orders were just appalling to me that the Federal Government would reach into a private sector like that and basically say, 'well, you can't practice law the way that you think is the most effective for your clients', and the flip side of that to me is, okay, here's these gigantic law firms.

it just didn't feel to me like they put up much of a fight, and if there was an organization that had the legal firepower, if there were organizations that had the legal firepower to withstand the Federal Government, these were them. So that is context for me.

I think you said one of the executive orders said that, or maybe it was the settlement that said that Paul Weiss or one of the other firms that reached the deal said that they were no longer going to worry about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Is that correct?

I believe that's correct, and I think that these firms all committed, I believe, in the resolution of their cases to what's characterized in this one executive order that I posted, to so called merit-based hiring practices, which to me, again, I think that there's real concern about absolute flat-out quotas. But to me, that's not what we're talking about.

If we're talking about, having programs for traditionally underrepresented groups, so they can learn more about the firm, have the opportunity to come and engage with the firm. The firm is going to reach out to different communities and recruit in those areas. Those things are all to me, absolutely legitimate. It's a big piece but that's part of what this is all about.

I mean, there's a couple of things there that strike me as odd and maybe more than a couple. I mean, why would the government care who you hire in terms of I guess the Trump argument is that you're discriminating against white people because they're not traditionally considered DEI.

Although women might be considered an inclusionary one. But, you know, we live in Hawaii where there is no majority really, so we're all sort of DEI.

I don't know. I'm not really sure I guess, I'm really just pondering why the government felt like that was a good idea. I mean, is it really as simple as they were worried about not enough white people being hired?

Well, I mean, there's been a huge sea change in the government's position on diversity, equity, and inclusion and what the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, should be focusing on. So, you know, historically, it's focused on issues related to police brutality, election integrity, and a whole range of issues.

But now it is laser focused on trying to eradicate, anything that appears in any way to try to address the legacy of discrimination that might exist with some communities, for whatever reason, whether that's intentional or whether it's a lack of opportunity, to get an edge you know, to have good educational opportunities in particular communities, whatever it might be.

That is now very firmly in the in the firing line and it especially with medical schools. I think there's several medical schools have been targeted. I believe several law schools have been have received letters from the administration saying, we believe you are taking race into account, and because of that, you are subject to losing federal funding in a variety of different ways.

So, this is a whole very large, significant change in the way the Federal Government does business, and that applies to as far as I'm aware, I think universities, law schools, med schools, and law firms. These are just the different places or ways in which it's been administered.

There was a process in place among that was voluntarily agreed to by a number of law firms where they would sort of not unlike what the NFL does in guaranteeing, opportunities to be considered by candidates from traditionally under recognized groups.

I think it was called the Mansfield principles, which law firms many law firms can, committed to, and now, as I understand it, the group that had put those principles forward basically said, 'we're not doing it anymore'.

The other area where this has really come up is with the American, ABA, the American Bar Association, which I think in the administration's view, the ABA, accredits law school. So, that's a really important piece of what they do. Historically, they've done that.

In accreditation, the claim by the administration is that they have pursued diversity, equity and inclusion policies that the administration views as unlawful, and now some states have taken away, and have said, we're not going to let the ABA accredited our law school.

I think Texas has done that and a couple of other states. It's not clear to me what where that's going to leave graduates of the University of Texas Law School, but you know, that's one issue. I think you're seeing now, there's a sort of a proposed rule.

I think that's, that's been sort of floated for comment. I think it's from the education department, that would appear to take the ABA out of that process altogether, and that to me, is a step backwards.

I will say the American Bar Association has stood up in a number of different ways during all of what's happening to advocate for the rule of law and to stand up for lawyers. They actually filed their own lawsuit regarding the executive orders with the law firms, and I think they're feeling the effects of that.

Let me ask you one more question about the law firm. So, part of the settlement from one of the firms that settled was that they would do X number of pro bono hours. If you were one of the clients that was getting that pro bono work, I at least would be like, okay. This is a firm that is being forced to give these pro bono hours.

Are they really going to go to bat for me like a lawyer is supposed to? And if you lose, I mean, it seems to me like it raises a ineffective assistance of counsel situation where if you're being forced into doing something, maybe you're not doing it with Gusto. I think it's another really interesting question.

I think the question is what the downstream effects of these very large firms are? basically, saying we're going to be focusing in on the issues that the administration has identified as being approved pro bono issues, which I believe are veterans, antisemitism, and there's one other that was identified.

So, what that means and what I think has happened, and even among the firms, my understanding is that they didn't agree to these to settle. The other big firms that are just kind of sitting out there wondering like, 'hey, where are we at?'.

Just sort of quietly are backing away from the big impact type litigation, and I think, law firms that maybe back in the first Trump administration might have been at the forefront of taking on Muslim travel bans are now, just sort of telling their associates, we're going to focus on veterans' rights cases.

I have no doubt that to me, I am sure and confident that the lawyers who are doing those cases, especially the associates, who are doing those cases, are doing their very, very best, and frankly, they do those cases already, I think.

It's just that the notion of saying, we're going to tell you what the approved list of cases that you can do pro bono work on, is again, the administration or the government dictating, sort of to me, they're free-speech issues, they're professional responsibility issues, they're issues of the right to associate and engage in collective activity by the firm.

At a very basic level, what right does the government have to tell a law firm who they're going to represent?

Very famously, I believe it was John Adams, during the Revolutionary War Period, represented, British soldiers who were accused of, killing, colonialists at the Boston Massacre. He did that, a great personal risk, to his own to his own professional standing.

I mean, that was tremendously unpopular thing for him to do, but he basically said, in my view, this is an ethical responsibility that I have, to provide representation to folks who otherwise might not get it.

So, you know, rather than pushing people in certain directions, we should, to me, celebrate the fact that we have lawyers who are willing to take on clients who are, reviled in our community, who are hated, for whatever reason or powerless.

That's the point of equal justice before the law, and you're going to have lawyers willing to take those cases and not look over their shoulders waiting to have the government punish them because they chose to represent someone who the government disfavors.

Then it goes to the Supreme Court, and they say, 'well, we're just going to do this anyway', and I admit I haven't practiced law actively in twenty-five years, but some of these cases would appear that they just don't care what the precedent is.

Other questions? No. Okay. I have one other topic I would like to discuss. So, you emphasized that you believe that the judicial system can still be trusted. I have to say that and it's hard to know whether being in a partisan position as long as I've been a partisan in a partisan position is coloring my views, but I don't think it is.

If you look to the very top of our legal system, which is the Supreme Court of the United States, some of the decisions they've come out with in the last few years or ones that they look like they've decided that they're going to be a legislature now, and after Congress has acted or not acted and the president has vetoed or not vetoed and it's and it's been overwritten or not.

Normally, at least my observation has been, that even on hot button cases like abortion, as the court got more conservative over the years, they sort of whittled away at the edges of Roe V Wade.

But they never just said, okay. That precedent is irrelevant. We're just going to overturn it. But that's essentially what you got. I don't know. It's not essentially what you got. That's what you got. They just said this was this was wrongly decided, and we're going to ignore that president, and I would say that Roe is not the only one like that.

So my point of all this is, it makes it hard for me to trust the US Supreme Court if someone who observes it as carefully as I do, which isn't as careful as some people but more careful than most, If you can't trust the highest court in the land to be judicial, to look at the facts, look at the precedent, look at the law, then doesn't it cast a shadow on everything below it?

My sense and, it's a great question. It's a tough question. The federal trial courts and courts of appeal have really stood up in this era in terms of being willing to take on tough cases and rule in ways that are difficult. I'll say there are there are decisions by the court, the Supreme Court that I vigorously disagree with on a variety of grounds.

On the other hand, I think the I think the story is still being written, and I think historically the court, is in some sense it's a political institution, in that it understands and it responds to what it's hearing from and sensing, from the public and from the lower courts.

I think that as much as I disagree with, a number of those decisions, there are other decisions that have gone in a way, like the tariff case, this recent voting decision that have gone in a way that I think that's the direction the law should have been interpreted.

So, as frustrating as it is, you know, and there are a lot of reasons that you might think, you know, we should have, a Supreme Court that has the potential to turn over more often, and these are the questions of having a larger court.

There are things that Congress can do as a democratic body, in terms of structuring the court system, having more justices, having current justices move to a different kind of docket after twenty years and the like that could make the system, the Supreme Court more responsive to whatever the current sort of views are of justice and of what's necessary and what's important.

But to be fair, the court was vigorously criticized for its rulings during the Warren Court too, and people said these are these are lawless rulings and there's really strong feelings on both sides.

I think absolutely there should be mandatory judicial ethics rules in the court, I think the notion of not disclosing who you're getting money from or who you're taking trips from is very corrosive to the court, and it has taken steps in regard to that. So, for me, I guess I'm not ready to give up yet, but I do think the story is still being written.

It's one you have to have a long-range perspective, but I understand your frustration and concerns.

Thank you. Anything else?

No. Nothing else, and thank you very much, team justice. I agree with you. I believe the story is being written. I do commend our Hawaii Supreme Court and their recent rulings, basically, questioning the US Supreme Court's positions too.

So, I am hopeful that there are people who and I thank Chair Rhodes for having this informational briefing, so that the rule of law will continue to be top of mind regardless of the corrosive agenda of the Federal Government federal administration at this time, and so I thank you for being here.

Yeah, and I thank the committee for holding this briefing. It's incredibly important, and I hope it's been beneficial for those folks who've been watching it or will watch it in the future, and it's something that I intend to keep engaged on. I thank both of you for being here today and spending the time with us.

Thank you. There's one there's one other thing I meant to meant to mention when I was describing, going over your resume, basically. Chief justice Recktenwald was a just in case you thought he was, like, a radical leftist of some kind from what he said today. He wasn't. He was a Republican nominee.

So, I think it just goes to show where we are in the country and the state, that people who probably or at least are certainly more conservative than I am, are feeling are having these concerns about where we're headed with the rule of law and with the judiciary. With that, thank you very much for appearing, and we really appreciate it.

Thank you very much, and thank you, Chair Rhodes, for your leadership in this committee and to your staff for everything they've done to support you over the years. I personally am going to miss you, and I know there are a lot of folks in our community who feel the same way but wish you nothing but the best in whatever path you take going forward.

Thank you very much.