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 1951 / Served to 1961

Francis Knauss

Justice, Colorado Supreme Court

Francis Knauss was a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1884–1968
Tenure: 1951–1961 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	Colorado Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Colorado Boulder

Judicial Record

In our data, Knauss authored 396 published opinions for the court (1951–1960), plus 9 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: First National Bank v. Honstein (511 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. 134 of these were attributed to Knauss 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
1960	First National Bank v. Honstein†	144 Colo. 176	511
1960	Vogts v. Guerrette	351 P.2d 851	58
1957	Geer v. Stathopulos· Dissent†	309 P.2d 606	48
1954	Montgomery Ward & Co. v. Pherson	272 P.2d 643	47
1955	Nunemacher v. Nunemacher†	287 P.2d 662	42
1960	Kendall v. Hargrave	349 P.2d 993	41
1959	Brooke v. People· Dissent†	339 P.2d 993	40
1956	Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation v. Francis	301 P.2d 139	39
1960	Robinson v. Kerr	355 P.2d 117	37
1956	Byron v. York Investment Company	296 P.2d 742	37
1957	Travis v. People	308 P.2d 997	36
1954	Lockwood Grader Corp. v. Bockhaus	270 P.2d 193	36
1955	Newcomb v. Schaeffler	279 P.2d 409	35
1960	Hamm v. Thompson	353 P.2d 73	32
1955	Piz v. Housing Authority	289 P.2d 905	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 407 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 Francis Knauss on?: Francis Knauss 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

10 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).