How do judges of the Colorado Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Colorado Court of Appeals / Joined 1974 / Served to 1990

Aurel Maxey Kelly

Judge, Colorado Court of Appeals

Aurel Maxey Kelly was a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1923–2000
Tenure: 1974–1990 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Colorado Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Whitman College

Judicial Record

In our data, Kelly authored 413 published opinions for the court (1974–1992), plus 13 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: In re the Marriage of Lorenzo (329 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 155 of these were attributed to Kelly by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1986	In re the Marriage of Lorenzo†	721 P.2d 155	329
1978	People in Interest of PD	580 P.2d 836	188
1979	People v. Martinez	608 P.2d 359	185
1986	Pittman v. Larson Distributing Co.	724 P.2d 1379	74
1986	People v. Shackelford	729 P.2d 1016	73
1977	Good v. AB Chance Co.	565 P.2d 217	62
1978	Lampe v. Presbyterian Med. Center	590 P.2d 513	57
1979	People v. Lincoln	601 P.2d 641	49
1988	Walter S. Cheesman Realty Co. v. Moore	770 P.2d 1308	47
1974	Barker v. Colorado Reg.-Sports Car Club of Am., Inc.	532 P.2d 372	46
1982	Zalnis v. Thoroughbred Datsun Car Co.	645 P.2d 292	41
1977	Miller v. Carnation Co.	564 P.2d 127	41
1988	Gamble v. Levitz Furniture Co. of the Midwest	759 P.2d 761	40
1988	Bucholtz v. Safeco Insurance Co. of America	773 P.2d 590	39
1982	People v. Anderson· Dissent†	649 P.2d 720	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 431 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Colorado Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Aurel Maxey Kelly on?: Aurel Maxey Kelly was a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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16 years on the Colorado Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).