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 1937 / Served to 1947

William Lee Knous

Justice, Colorado Supreme Court

William Lee Knous was a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1889–1959
Tenure: 1937–1947 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	Colorado Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Colorado Boulder
University of Colorado Boulder

Judicial Record

In our data, Knous authored 22 published opinions for the court (1937–1946), plus 9 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Bedford v. Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp. (59 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. 37 of these were attributed to Knous 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
1938	Bedford v. Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp.†	81 P.2d 752	59
1941	Fabling v. Jones†	114 P.2d 1100	40
1939	City & County of Denver v. Sheriff· Concurrence†	96 P.2d 836	36
1944	Davis v. People· Dissent†	150 P.2d 67	34
1943	Cahill v. People†	137 P.2d 673	32
1940	City & County of Denver v. Lewin· Dissent†	105 P.2d 854	32
1946	Robinson v. People· Dissent†	165 P.2d 763	23
1941	Vail v. Denver Building & Construction Trades†	115 P.2d 389	20
1937	Helser v. People†	68 P.2d 543	20
1944	Edwards v. Quackenbush†	149 P.2d 809	19
1944	American Federation of Labor v. Reilly†	155 P.2d 145	17
1937	Allen v. City of Colorado Springs†	75 P.2d 141	17
1945	Harris v. People· Dissent†	160 P.2d 372	16
1937	City of Denver v. Tax Research Bureau†	71 P.2d 809	15
1941	Gordon v. Wheatridge Water District†	109 P.2d 899	14

Showing the 15 most-cited of 37 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 William Lee Knous on?: William Lee Knous 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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10 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).