judicial branch
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Heavy docket: Study recommends Colorado’s second-highest court expand by 25% to handle workload | COVER STORY
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In the past two years, Chief Judge Gilbert M. Román has presided over five swearing-in ceremonies for new judges on Colorado’s second-highest court. He has repeatedly opened with the same disclaimer about the 22-member Court of Appeals. “This is considered a heavy-docket court,” Román says. Numerically speaking, that amounted to 1,745 written opinions issued in the last…
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More than a half dozen Colorado judges still haven’t filed financial disclosure
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Colorado Watch logo-new (copy) More than a half dozen Colorado judges are still delinquent in updating missing personal financial disclosure statements with state officials, despite a Denver Gazette investigation that flagged them about the problem two weeks ago. There were 15 judges delinquent as of Thursday – one of them on the Appellate Court bench – but the…
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Colorado appeals court judges should not sit in judgment of Supreme Court justices: Discipline panel
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Allowing judges from the Colorado Court of Appeals to stand in judgment over a Supreme Court justice accused of misconduct would be fraught with the appearance of impropriety and potential conflicts of interest. So says the state Commission on Judicial Discipline in a letter to a panel of legislators scheduled to take up a trio…
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Polis signs bill creating legislative committee to study judicial discipline
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The leaders of both houses of Colorado’s Legislature have two weeks to appoint the eight members of a bipartisan committee to study whether the state’s method of investigating and disciplining judges needs an overhaul. With Gov. Jared Polis’ signature to Senate Bill 22-201 on Friday, the next step is to assemble the four senators and…
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Balis: Fixing youth corrections in Colorado starts by reducing its use
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Disturbing conditions in Colorado’s youth corrections facilities were documented in the report Bound and Broken by the Child Safety Coalition. While the allegations and disagreements between the report’s authors and the state’s Department of Youth Corrections (DYC) might seem unbridgeable, there is a path forward for Colorado that starts with rethinking its approach to troubled…
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Law school enrollment may be on the rise
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Many smart, ambitious undergrads no longer automatically think of law school as their path to success. The recession of the late 2000s resulted in a nationwide drop in student interest in law school and opportunities for young lawyers. Numbers might be ticking up slightly now, based on Law School Admission Test statistics and first-year class…
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Drama-laden open records bill survives another hearing
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A bill aimed at modernizing Colorado’s Open Records Act has survived its first Senate hearing – but with an amendment that could mean trouble down the road. The GOP-led Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee voted 4-1 Wednesday to send Senate Bill 40 by Democratic Sen. John Kefalas to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill would, in…