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 1983 / Served to 1988

Lewis Thornton Babcock

Judge, Colorado Court of Appeals

Lewis Thornton Babcock was a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: 1983–1988 · 5 yrs
Education: University of Denver 1965

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Colorado Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

University of Denver

B.A.

1965

Judicial Record

In our data, Babcock authored 125 published opinions for the court (1983–1988), plus 9 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: People in Interest of SB (364 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. 136 of these were attributed to Babcock 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
1987	People in Interest of SB· Dissent†	742 P.2d 935	364
1985	People v. Robinson†	713 P.2d 1333	316
1986	Bassett v. State Board of Dental Examiners†	727 P.2d 864	147
1987	Mayerle v. Civil Service Commission†	738 P.2d 1198	90
1983	International Technical Instruments, Inc. v. Engineering Measurements Co.†	678 P.2d 558	44
1983	People v. Piro†	671 P.2d 1341	23
1985	Vogel v. Carolina International, Inc.· Concurrence†	711 P.2d 708	21
1988	People ex rel. T.R.W.†	759 P.2d 768	20
1985	Reddick v. Craig†	719 P.2d 340	19
1987	People ex rel. D.M.W.†	752 P.2d 587	18
1983	Short v. Kinkade· Dissent†	685 P.2d 210	18
1985	Varsity Contractors & Home Insurance Co. v. Baca†	709 P.2d 55	17
1983	In Re the Marriage of DaFoe†	677 P.2d 426	17
1984	Sanchez v. Connecticut General Life Insurance Co.†	681 P.2d 974	15
1986	People Ex Rel. S.L.H. v. J.M.H.†	736 P.2d 1226	14

Showing the 15 most-cited of 136 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 Lewis Thornton Babcock on?: Lewis Thornton Babcock 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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5 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).