Regent

Artemio C. Baxa

Retired attorney and Judge Artemio C. Baxa joined the Board of Regents in 2008.

Baxa was born in a northern Philippines farming village. He earned a law degree from the Ateneo de Manila University Law School and a master’s degree in comparative law at the University of Chicago Law School. After working in a Manila law firm for three years, he immigrated to Hawai‘i and joined his father, a sugar plantation laborer, in the plantation camp in Pu‘unene, Maui.

After a stint as part-time bellhop at the then Wailuku Hotel and community aide and project supervisor at Maui Economic Opportunity, he completed a two-year work-study grant at UH Manoa’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, and then returned to MEO as a planner and community Improvement and development coordinator.

He returned to school at UH’s William S. Richardson School of Law, earning his law degree and becoming licensed to practice law in 1978. In 2004 he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court. During that time, Baxa served as deputy director of the Maui County Department of Human Concerns and as deputy prosecutor, earning his department’s Employee of the Year and Maui County Employee of the Year honors in 1988.

He also spent five years in private law practice and three years as circuit court judge of the Second Circuit, State of Hawai‘i before retiring in 2001.

Baxa served as president of the Maui County Bar Association and as an officer and/or board member in various civic and community organizations on Maui. He was a member of the State of Hawai‘i Filipino Centennial Commission. In 2002 he was honored in Washington, D.C., as one of 20 Outstanding Filipino-Americans in the U.S. and Canada by the Filipino Image magazine. During Maui County’s 2005 Centennial Celebration, he was named one of 100 Outstanding Citizens of Maui County 1905–2005.