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 1994 / Served to 2005

Robert J. Kapelke

Judge, Colorado Court of Appeals

Robert J. Kapelke was a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1994–2005 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Colorado Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

University of Colorado Boulder
University of Colorado Boulder

Judicial Record

In our data, Kapelke authored 222 published opinions for the court (1994–2011), plus 3 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Jenkins (535 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. 70 of these were attributed to Kapelke 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	People v. Jenkins	83 P.3d 1122	535
1998	In Re the Marriage of Zinke	967 P.2d 210	314
1999	People v. Kriho· Concurrence†	996 P.2d 158	207
1996	Jennings v. Ibarra	921 P.2d 62	170
2002	Leming v. Industrial Claim Appeals Office of the State	62 P.3d 1015	80
2000	People v. Frank	30 P.3d 664	75
2003	People v. Allee	77 P.3d 831	61
1998	People v. IN THE INTEREST OF VW	958 P.2d 1132	54
1996	Thompson v. Budget Rent-A-Car System, Inc.	940 P.2d 987	47
2002	People v. Johnson	74 P.3d 349	35
2001	Camas Colorado, Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners	36 P.3d 135	31
2004	McGowan v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.	100 P.3d 521	29
1995	In Re the Marriage of Foottit	903 P.2d 1209	28
2002	Wark v. Board of County Commissioners	47 P.3d 711	26
1996	Cedar Lane Investments v. American Roofing Supply of Colorado Springs, Inc.· Concurrence†	919 P.2d 879	26

Showing the 15 most-cited of 229 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 Robert J. Kapelke on?: Robert J. Kapelke 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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11 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).