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

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

Colorado Supreme Court / Joined 1931 / Served to 1951

Benjamin C. Hilliard

Justice, Colorado Supreme Court

Benjamin C. Hilliard was a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1931. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1868–1951
Tenure: 1931–1951 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1931	Colorado Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hilliard authored 324 published opinions for the court (1931–1951), plus 57 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Johnson v. McDonald (64 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. 82 of these were attributed to Hilliard 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
1935	Johnson v. McDonald· Dissent†	49 P.2d 1017	64
1938	Bedford v. Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp.· Dissent†	81 P.2d 752	59
1934	Reppin v. People· Concurrence†	34 P.2d 71	48
1933	Walker v. Bedford	26 P.2d 1051	46
1950	Downey v. People· Dissent†	215 P.2d 892	45
1948	Routa v. People· Dissent†	117 Colo. 564	37
1942	Sandoval v. Industrial Commission· Dissent†	130 P.2d 930	36
1938	Leach v. Manhart	77 P.2d 652	35
1950	Berger v. People· Dissent†	224 P.2d 228	33
1938	City of Colorado Springs v. Colburn	81 P.2d 397	33
1950	Benham v. Heyde	221 P.2d 1078	32
1943	Cahill v. People· Dissent†	137 P.2d 673	32
1938	Smaldone v. People· Dissent†	88 P.2d 103	30
1944	Pensioners Protective Ass'n v. Davis	150 P.2d 974	28
1934	Eder v. Methodist Episcopal Church Ass'n	29 P.2d 631	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 390 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 Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Benjamin C. Hilliard on?: Benjamin C. Hilliard was a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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