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 1956

John R. Clark

Justice, Colorado Supreme Court

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

Born: 1988 · age 38
Tenure: 1951–1956 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	Colorado Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Clark authored 74 published opinions for the court (1951–1956), plus 2 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Pettingell v. Moede (243 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. 19 of these were attributed to Clark 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
1954	Pettingell v. Moede	271 P.2d 1038	243
1955	WANAMAKER DITCH COMPANY v. Crane†	288 P.2d 339	166
1952	Walker v. People	248 P.2d 287	91
1954	Farmers Highline Canal & Reservoir Co. v. City of Golden†	129 Colo. 575	66
1952	Yenter v. Baker· Dissent†	248 P.2d 311	46
1951	American Mining Co. v. Himrod-Kimball Mines Co.	235 P.2d 804	46
1952	Potashnik v. Public Service Co. of Colorado	247 P.2d 137	38
1952	Maloney v. Jussel	241 P.2d 862	36
1952	Morlan v. Durland Trust Co.†	127 Colo. 5	31
1955	Brown v. People	291 P.2d 680	29
1955	Knapp v. Colorado River Water Conservation District†	131 Colo. 42	29
1953	Franzen v. Zimmerman	256 P.2d 897	29
1953	Northcutt v. Burton	254 P.2d 1013	28
1951	Moreau v. Buchholz	236 P.2d 540	27
1954	Maercklein v. Smith	266 P.2d 1095	25

Showing the 15 most-cited of 79 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 John R. Clark on?: John R. Clark 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.

5 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).