Biography

Robert J. Faris is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Hawaii. He received a B.A. from Reed College in 1980 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He is also a judge of the United States Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit. He received his J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, in 1983.

He served as an associate editor of the California Law Review in 1982-83, published “Insurance Corporation of Ireland v. Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee: Justifying Establishment of Jurisdiction as a Discovery Sanction,” 70 Calif. L. Rev. 1446 (1982), and was elected to the Order of the Coif.

From 1983 until 2002, he practiced with a Honolulu law firm, emphasizing bankruptcy, insolvency, and commercial litigation. He became a bankruptcy judge in February 2002 and joined the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel in August 2015. He is a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute, the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, and the American College of Bankruptcy.