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 1980 / Served to 1983

Howard M. Kirshbaum

Judge, Colorado Court of Appeals

Howard M. Kirshbaum was a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1980–1983 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Colorado Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Yale University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Kirshbaum authored 121 published opinions for the court (1980–2004), plus 3 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: In Re the Marriage of Tatum (512 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. 51 of these were attributed to Kirshbaum 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
1982	In Re the Marriage of Tatum	653 P.2d 74	512
1981	People v. Founds	631 P.2d 1166	237
1983	Farmers Group, Inc. v. Trimble	658 P.2d 1370	226
2002	Yadon v. Southward	64 P.3d 909	192
1982	Dodge v. Department of Social Services	657 P.2d 969	33
1982	United Fire & Casualty Co., Cedar Rapids, Iowa v. Day	657 P.2d 981	29
1981	People v. Crespin· Concurrence†	631 P.2d 1144	25
1982	Chambliss/Jenkins Associates. v. Forster	650 P.2d 1315	22
1981	People v. Martinez	652 P.2d 174	22
1983	R & R Well Service Co. v. Industrial Commission	658 P.2d 1389	20
1982	Lininger v. City of Sheridan Ex Rel. People	648 P.2d 1097	20
1982	People Ex Rel. MacFarlane v. Alpert Corp.	660 P.2d 1295	17
1980	Kniffin v. Colorado Western Development Co.	622 P.2d 586	17
1981	Wiley v. Bank of Fountain Valley	632 P.2d 282	16
1981	People v. White	632 P.2d 609	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 129 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 Howard M. Kirshbaum on?: Howard M. Kirshbaum was a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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3 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).