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 1997 / Served to 2014

Michael L. Bender

Justice, Colorado Supreme Court

Michael L. Bender was a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1942 · age 84
Tenure: 1997–2014 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Colorado Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bender authored 203 published opinions for the court (1997–2013), plus 43 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Domingo-Gomez v. People (1,816 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. 123 of these were attributed to Bender 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
2005	Domingo-Gomez v. People· Dissent†	125 P.3d 1043	1,816
2005	People v. Miller· Concurrence†	113 P.3d 743	1,592
2005	Dempsey v. People· Concurrence†	117 P.3d 800	1,458
2006	Edwards v. People†	129 P.3d 977	962
2002	Masters v. People· Dissent†	58 P.3d 979	936
2003	People v. Minjarez	81 P.3d 348	915
1997	In re Marriage of Aldrich†	945 P.2d 1370	753
2006	Musick v. Woznicki	136 P.3d 244	702
2011	Allen v. Steele	252 P.3d 476	701
2010	City & County of Broomfield v. Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co.†	239 P.3d 1270	683
2008	Arko v. People	183 P.3d 555	668
1999	Todd v. Bear Valley Village Apartments†	980 P.2d 973	568
2008	School District No. 12 v. Security Life of Denver Insurance Co.	185 P.3d 781	489
2001	Griego v. People†	19 P.3d 1	460
2012	Kazadi v. People· Dissent†	291 P.3d 16	405

Showing the 15 most-cited of 263 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 Michael L. Bender on?: Michael L. Bender 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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17 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).