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 2015 / Active

Richard Lance Gabriel

Justice, Colorado Supreme Court

Richard Lance Gabriel is a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, serving since 2015. He previously served on the Colorado Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1962 · age 64
Tenure: Since 2015 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Colorado Court of Appeals	–	–
2015	Colorado Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Yale University
University of Pennsylvania

Judicial Record

In our data, Gabriel authored 113 published opinions for the court (2008–2019), plus 27 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: Warne v. Hall (1,148 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. 128 of these were attributed to Gabriel 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
2016	Warne v. Hall· Dissent†	2016 CO 50	1,148
2009	People ex rel. S.G.L.†	214 P.3d 580	879
2017	Vallagio at Inverness Residential Condominium Ass'n v. Metropolitan Homes, Inc.†	395 P.3d 788	817
2012	People v. Samson†	302 P.3d 311	705
2017	Lucero v. People· Concurrence†	2017 CO 49	567
2019	Bermel v. BlueRadios, Inc.· Dissent†	2019 CO 31	536
2017	Marsh v. People· Concurrence†	389 P.3d 100	530
2016	Pinnacol Assurance v. Hoff· Concurrence†	2016 CO 53	520
2010	Barnett v. Elite Properties of America, Inc.	252 P.3d 14	475
2017	v. Zadra No. 15SC262, People v. Adams†	2017 CO 18	388
2014	People v. Washington†	345 P.3d 950	379
2008	In re the Parental Responsibilities M.J.K.†	200 P.3d 1106	376
2008	People v. Firth	205 P.3d 445	370
2017	In re the Marriage of Gromicko†	387 P.3d 58	343
2014	People v. Curtis†	350 P.3d 949	332

Showing the 15 most-cited of 162 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 is Richard Lance Gabriel on?: Richard Lance Gabriel is a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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11 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).