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 2000 / Former Justice

Nathan B. Coats

Justice, Colorado Supreme Court

Nathan B. Coats was a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1959 · age 67
Tenure: 2000 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Colorado Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Coats authored 159 published opinions for the court (2000–2019), plus 121 dissents and 76 concurrences. Most cited: Ardolino v. People (1,512 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. 269 of these were attributed to Coats 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
2003	Ardolino v. People	69 P.3d 73	1,512
2018	Castillo v. People· Dissent†	2018 CO 62	1,442
2010	People v. Bergerud· Dissent†	223 P.3d 686	1,379
2016	Warne v. Hall†	2016 CO 50	1,148
2005	Lopez v. People· Concurrence†	113 P.3d 713	1,102
2011	SANCHEZ-MARTINEZ v. People· Dissent†	250 P.3d 1248	1,043
2008	Golob v. People· Dissent†	180 P.3d 1006	954
2003	People v. Minjarez· Concurrence†	81 P.3d 348	915
2009	Yusem v. People· Dissent†	210 P.3d 458	842
2017	Venalonzo v. People· Concurrence†	388 P.3d 868	792
2002	People v. Rath†	44 P.3d 1033	792
2006	People v. Isaacks· Dissent†	133 P.3d 1190	772
2006	People v. Huber· Concurrence†	139 P.3d 628	771
2018	People v. Stellabotte· Dissent†	2018 CO 66	714
2019	Calvert v. Mayberry· Dissent†	2019 CO 23	693

Showing the 15 most-cited of 356 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 Nathan B. Coats on?: Nathan B. Coats 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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26 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).