Title: Romer Party Plus One: Managing Public Law in Colorado, 2000-2004
Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Roy served a twelve-year stay as Colorado's Governor from 1987 to 1999 (1) during which he hand crafted the course of judicial affairs by personally selecting justices for the State's highest court. For better or worse, the former Governor capsulated his legacy in the appointments of six of the seven justices currently sitting on the Colorado Supreme Court--or, as it has appropriately been called, the Romer (2) While selection bias appeared minimal, skeptics questioned the Governor for appointing five fellow party members to the Supreme Court. (3) In the present, arguments remain as to whether this court is a solid, ideologically moderate panel, or judiciary controlled by liberal, activist judges. (4) In the last decade, the Colorado judiciary has received a great deal of attention from beyond Colorado's borders--in part because of three highly publicized cases, two of which had political implications. In 1994, the Colorado Supreme Court decided Evans v. Romer, confronting some of America's most endeared constitutional freedoms, including the ability to participate in political processes. (5) In 2004, Kobe Bryant's legal bonanza took the State of Colorado and the nation by storm. With millions of onlookers, Colorado courts were under a microscope. In the end, the case was abruptly dismissed and the only remnants were an opinion by the Colorado Supreme Court (6) regarding media access to court documents and the ascendance of Judge Terry Ruckriegle to figure status in a manner reminiscent of the O.J. Simpson trial. In 2003, the Colorado Supreme Court heard People ex rel. Salazar v. Davidson, which rekindled intrastate political tensions regarding legislative redistricting efforts. (7) Opponents attacked the court for what they viewed as a partisan outcome, (8) and the net result was continued strife and a Republican-led march to the United States Supreme Court on the public's tab. (9) Albeit for different reasons, each of these occurrences impacted Colorado natives and foreign onlookers by making the opaquely judicial relevant to citizens' everyday lives. (10) But it is essential to realize that judges confront these issues daily, not merely when national media outlets adopt a case as breaking news. For this reason, it is speculative to classify judges' or the court's ideological balance based on political affiliations or a few isolated decisions. When a court stands divided, ideological differences among justices tend to surface more so than in unanimous writings. (11) Thus, the optimal method for assessing the state of judicial independence within the Colorado Supreme Court is to examine separate opinions (12) issued in split-decision cases over a given period of time. By integrating voting records and trends, a judge's views can be ascertained amidst ambiguities in the author's writings. (13) Separate opinions are most probative in criminal cases and civil cases addressing public law issues because they reveal justices' voting propensities in certain issues--i.e., such as favoring individuals who face state actors in civil liberties cases, or favoring the prosecution or defense in criminal cases. (14) A natural outgrowth then becomes the division of a court's justices into a conservative or liberal (15) category to isolate tendencies and trends central to the judicial process, but often overlooked. The Colorado Supreme Court is currently in an interesting evolutionary stage. While studies of this nature often analyze courts in transition phases, the composition of Colorado's high court has not changed since 2000, and thus a unique opportunity exists to examine the dynamics of a panel of judges with extensive experience as a cohesive unit. As this study will demonstrate, however, collective experience does not necessarily foster unanimity in decision making, as evidenced by the wealth of separate opinions and adjoining votes during the years at issue. …
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-03-22
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot