We describe an adaptive hp-refinement local finite element procedure for the parallel solution of hyperbolic conservation laws on rectangular domains. The local finite element procedure utilizes spaces of piecewise-continuous polynomials of arbitrary degree and coordinated explicit Runge-Kutta temporal integration. A solution limiting procedure produces monotonic solutions near discontinuities while maintaining high-order accuracy near smooth extrema. A modified tiling procedure maintains processor load balance on parallel, distributed-memory MIMD computers by migrating finite elements between processors in overlapping neighborhoods to produce locally balanced computations. Grids are stored in tree data structures, with finer grids being offspring of coarser ones. Within each grid, AVL trees simplify the transfer of information between neighboring processors and the insertion and deletion of elements as they migrate between processors. Computations involving Burgers' and Euler's equations of inviscid flow demonstrate the effectiveness of the hp-refinement and balancing procedures relative to non-balanced adaptive and balanced non-adaptive procedures.