CHIEF JUSTICE RONALD T. Y. MOON
Supreme Court of Hawaii

Ronald T. Y. Moon was sworn-in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii on March 31, 1993, after having served as an associate justice for three years. In 2003, Chief Justice Moon was retained to serve a second term of office. Prior to his appointment to the Hawai`i Supreme Court, Chief Justice Moon served as a circuit court judge for eight years. 

Chief Justice Moon received his undergraduate degree from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and is a 1965 graduate of the University of Iowa School of Law. He served a one-year term as law clerk to then-Chief Judge Martin Pence of the United States District Court for the District of Hawai`i and was subsequently employed with the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney for the City and County of Honolulu from 1966 to 1968. After four years as an associate, Chief Justice Moon became a partner in the law firm of Libkuman, Ventura, Moon & Ayabe. He left private practice in 1982 upon being appointed to the circuit court bench.

Chief Justice Moon has served as an adjunct professor of Pretrial Litigation for the University of Hawaii's Richardson School of Law, as National Secretary of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), and as President of the Hawai`i Chapter of ABOTA. Chief Justice Moon has been a member of the Conference of Chief Justices’ (CCJ) Access to and Fairness in the Courts Committee since 1993 and has served as Chair of that committee since 1995. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts (2004-present) and the CCJ’s representative on the Board of Trustees for the American Inns of Court
Foundation (2004-present).

As a graduate of the University of Iowa Law School, Chief Justice Moon was featured as one of the first alumni honorees in its Gallery of Honor display at the entrance of the Boyd Law Building (1999). In May 2001, Chief Justice Moon received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa . Chief Justice Moon also received the Hawai’i State Bar Association’s Golden Gavel Award (2001) for his outstanding contributions. In February 2003, the National Center for State Courts presented Chief Justice Moon with its Distinguished Service Award, one of the Center’s highest awards, for his longstanding contributions to the improvement of the justice system and his support of the mission of the National Center .

In October 2003, Chief Justice Moon received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Inha University (Incheon, Korea) and was a co-recipient of the Grand Prize Award given by Kyungmin Mission Schools (Korea) for his dedication and efforts to the betterment of the international community.

Chief Justice Moon is a third-generation Korean-American. His grandparents were among the first wave of Korean immigrants who arrived in Hawaii in the early 1900's. He is the first Korean-American to become chief justice of any supreme court in the nation. 

[1] It is interesting to note that Wilfred C. Tsukiyama, the first chief justice of the 50th state of Hawai’i and the first Japanese American to head a state supreme court (1959-1965), graduated from Coe College in 1923.

[2] In honor of the occasion, Governor Linda Lingle and Lieutenant Governor James “Duke” Aiona,Jr. proclaimed February 24, 2003 as Chief Justice Ronald T. Y. Moon Day in Hawaii .  

[3] Inha University was founded in 1954 as the Inha Institute of Technology and is the realization of the dream of the first Korean immigrants to Hawaii . The name -- Inha -- is derived from the city in which it is located (“In” for Incheon) and from the first two letters of “ Hawaii ,” in memory of the first Korean immigrants.

Updated February 27, 2008