Judge Summer M.M. Kupau-Odo was sworn in as a District Court Judge of the First Circuit by Chief Justice Mark E. Recktenwald on November 29, 2018.  She presides over criminal and civil cases and is the current President of the Hawai‘i State Trial Judges Association.

Prior to her judicial appointment, Judge Kupau-Odo worked at Earthjustice, the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, and the state public defender’s office.  She served as a law clerk for Justice Simeon R. Acoba, Jr. at the Hawai‘i Supreme Court.

She obtained her law degree, with an environmental law certificate, from the University of Hawai‘i William S. Richardson School of Law, where she was an editor of the U.H. Law Review and has since taught the Environmental Litigation Seminar.  She holds a B.A. in English Writing and Rhetoric from Pepperdine University.  

A Maui native, Judge Kupau-Odo was raised in Lahaina, is a proud graduate of Lahainaluna High School, and comes from the ‘ohana Kupau of Hāna and Miyahira family of Lahaina.