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 1987 / Served to 2010

Mary J. Mullarkey

Justice, Colorado Supreme Court

Mary J. Mullarkey was a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: 1987–2010 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Colorado Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Mullarkey authored 377 published opinions for the court (1987–2011), plus 50 dissents and 52 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Stewart (1,181 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. 184 of these were attributed to Mullarkey 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
2002	People v. Stewart†	55 P.3d 107	1,181
2010	Goodman Associates, LLC v. WP Mountain Properties, LLC†	222 P.3d 310	881
1989	People v. Arguello†	772 P.2d 87	847
1993	Armintrout v. People	864 P.2d 576	839
1989	Jet Courier Service, Inc. v. Mulei· Concurrence†	771 P.2d 486	677
2002	People v. Harris	43 P.3d 221	533
2005	People v. Muckle	107 P.3d 380	528
1988	Nagy v. District Court of the City & County of Denver	762 P.2d 158	383
2007	Denver Foundation v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.	163 P.3d 1116	380
2009	Pinkstaff v. Black & Decker (U.S.) Inc.· Dissent†	211 P.3d 698	379
2009	Kaufman v. People†	202 P.3d 542	379
2007	Hewitt v. Rice	154 P.3d 408	362
1988	Destefano v. Grabrian· Concurrence†	763 P.2d 275	349
1997	Fair v. Red Lion Inn· Dissent†	943 P.2d 431	347
2005	People v. Madera	112 P.3d 688	340

Showing the 15 most-cited of 479 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 Mary J. Mullarkey on?: Mary J. Mullarkey 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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23 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).