Randall Roth

In 2011, he was the legal advisor for The Descendants, consulting on such issues. Starring George Clooney as Matt King, a Honolulu-based lawyer and the sole trustee of a family trust that controls 25,000 acres of pristine land on the island of Kaua'i, the film forces King to confront the realities of balancing the family's long-held interest in protecting the land with selling it to a developer.

In 2006, Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement and Political Manipulation at America's Largest Charitable Trust, co-authored by Roth and Samuel Pailthorpe King, a Judge for United States District Court for the District of Hawaii, chronicled the controversies that had enveloped Hawaiʻi's Bishop Estate, one of the nation's largest trusts, estimated to be valued by the Wall Street Journal at nearly $10 billion. Established by the Hawaiian Princess, Bernice Pauahi Bishop, in a trust before her death in 1884, the Estate was entrusted with running Kamehameha Schools, a private college preparatory school dedicated to educating Native Hawaiian youth.

In 1992 and 1993, Roth co-authored a series of best-selling books called The Price of Paradise. In them, he coined the term "Paradise Tax," a term now widely used to denote the differential in the cost of living in the United States Mainland versus Hawaiʻi. He attributed the "Paradise Tax" to multiple factors including differences in regulation, land use, land availability, and shipping costs.

Born in Ellinwood, Kansas, Roth graduated with a B.S. in economics and accounting from Regis University in Denver, Colorado in 1970. He later earned his JD from University of Denver College of Law in 1974 and his LLM from University of Miami School of Law in 1975. In 1982, he moved to Hawaiʻi, where he has lived since.