Appendix A. History of the Rules of Evidence and Restyling Efforts

The Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) were adopted in 1975. Hawaii and 44 other states have adopted evidence codes, by statute or court rule, which are patterned on the FRE.

In 1980, the Hawaii Rules of Evidence (HRE) were enacted into law as Chapter 626 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes. The HRE took effect January 1, 1981.

Hawaii, like most states, modeled its evidence rules after the FRE. Some federal rules were modified in the HRE to conform to existing Hawaii law. Although the HRE and the FRE are similar, there were at enactment, and continue to be, important differences between the two. Both the HRE and the FRE have been amended and some completely new rules have been added, such as 412 (Hawaii and federal), 409.5 (only Hawaii), 413-415 (only federal), and 502 (only federal).

The FRE were “restyled” in 2011 to “make them more easily understood and to make style and terminology consistent throughout the rules. These changes are intended to be stylistic only. There is no intent to change any result in any ruling on evidence admissibility…. The [Restyling] Committee made special efforts to reject any purposed style improvement that might result in a substantive change in the application of a rule.”  See Restyled Rules Committee Note for Restyled Rules of Evidence.

So far, only a few other states have restyled their rules of evidence. Hawaii is not one of them.

An excellent resource for understanding the differences between the FRE and the evidence rules of other states is the multi-volume treatise, Wharton’s Criminal Evidence by Bergman and Hollander. This treatise is available in the University of Hawaii law library and is available on Westlaw, where it is called CRIMEVID database. Despite its title, that treatise discusses both civil and criminal evidence issues.