By Don Knox, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER — Well-known figures in Colorado legal circles have quietly filed paperwork creating an organization to defend the state’s judiciary amid a campaign to force four state justices into retirement.
Former Colorado Public Defender David Kaplan and Berenbaum Weinshienk attorney James Kurtz-Phelan incorporated the Colorado Judiciary Project, briefly known as the Colorado Judicial Project, with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office in early April.
Trey Rogers, who only a month before the filing served as chief legal counsel to Gov. Bill Ritter, filed the group’s paperwork.
The effort comes as Clear the Bench Colorado, a local group, continues a campaign encouraging voters to vote against retaining Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey and justices Michael Bender, Alex Martinez and Nancy Rice.
The four justices, along with 139 other judges, are up for retention this fall. Under the state constitution, Colorado judges serve terms of varying length, requiring them to be periodically retained by voters. Since 1988, only seven judges have not been retained.
The Judiciary Project won’t directly advocate for voters to retain the four justices. Instead, it will educate voters about Colorado’s judicial-retention process, which includes lengthy judge performance evaluations, Kaplan said. Local performance commissions only rarely recommend a judge not be retained.
“It’s a response to what the people have gotten together perceive as an increasing issue,” he said. “By issue, I mean an attack on certainly the justices and, probably yes, judges who are making decisions on any level. In order to have a strong judiciary, you should look at the competence of the judges across lots of different issues, and not evaluate them in an overly politicized way.”
Kaplan added: “Plenty of good judges have ruled against me. It doesn’t mean that’s the basis of my evaluation of their abilities. “
The Colorado Judiciary Project is organized as a 501c4, which covers civic leagues, social welfare organizations and local employee associations.
Democratic Party attorney Mark Grueskin of Isaacson Rosenbaum and former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Jean Dubofsky, now in private practice, have been involved in the organization’s initial meetings, Kaplan noted, “as have other people.”
“It’s preliminary. We’re just now trying to put together what public education effort we want to pursue, gather information about where the need is,” Kaplan said. The group hopes to get as donors “a cross section of people.”
