Senda is the island’s first since statehood “I’m surprised I was selected, but I’m very happy,” Trudy Senda said of her nomination last week as the next judge of the District Court of the Fifth Circuit on Kaua’i. If confirmed
Senda is the island’s first since statehood
“I’m surprised I was selected, but I’m very happy,” Trudy Senda said of her nomination last week as the next judge of the District Court of the Fifth Circuit on Kaua’i.
If confirmed by the state Senate, Senda will become the first full-time female judge here since statehood in 1959.
There was one female judge during territorial days on Kaua’i, but Senda will be the first non-per diem (temporary) jurist to hear the phrase “her honor” in a Kaua’i courtroom in 42 years.
Senda, nominated by Hawai’i Chief Justice Ronald T.Y. Moon, was chosen from a list of six candidates submitted by the Judicial Selection Commission.
That list included Kaua’i County Councilman Randal Valenciano and public defenders Edmund Acoba and James Itamura.
Most recently, Senda was an associate with Valenciano’s law office.
A law graduate of the University of Hawaii’s William Richardson School of Law, Senda will fill the judgeship vacated by Clifford Nakea, who was elevated to the Fifth Circuit bench last fall.
Senda has been in private practice since becoming an attorney in 1983.
In Honolulu, she practiced commercial and real estate law. On Kaua’i, “because it is smaller, I’ve done a lot more things…criminal defense and personal injury, too,” Senda noted.
She’s been back on Kaua’i, where she was born and raised, for a decade.
Senda said her entire adult life of courtroom advocacy will have to change now that she’s the one making decisions, not trying to influence them.
“I think I’ll have to readjust the perspective,” she said, but added she has done some arbitration work in which she “got a taste” of neutrality.
Senda said she is excited about the new opportunity, although she wasn’t one of those lawyers who had always wanted to be a judge from her first day at the bar.
“I can honestly tell you the thought never did occur to me. It really didn’t occur to me until two years ago,” Senda said.
She applied then for the vacancy Nakea was selected to fill. And when Nakea moved up instead of her, Senda filed again.
Senda said her gender has never been a problem for her in Hawai’i.
“I think the difficulties I had as a young attorney were because I was entering a whole new world, a whole new life, not because I was a woman,” Senda said. “I think the state judiciary has done a good job” vis a vis women.
There are more than 20 female judges on various courts in the state, including Associate Supreme Court Justice Paula Nakayama and Intermediate Court of Appeals Associate Judge Corinne K. Watanabe.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and dwilken@pulitzer.net
