For months, former Colorado Senate President John Andrews argued that the state’s appellate judges were out of control.
Tuesday night, Andrews conceded that his efforts to pass Amendment 40, which would have limited Colorado’s Supreme Court justices and Court of Appeals judges to 10 years on the bench, had failed.
“We can accept defeat without excuses,” Andrews said. But he added that anti-40 forces had been able to muster more money and create fear of chaos in the courts if his proposal had passed.
Former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Kourlis, now executive director of the Denver-based Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, said she was heartened by the vote.
“This is a huge credit to the broad coalition that supported the judiciary and opposed the term limits,” she said. “It is a credit to the voters that understood the amendment would make the judiciary more political.”
In early returns, appeals Judge Jose D.L. Marquez, whom Andrews had called “the poster boy for term limits,” was leading in his effort to be retained.
Andrews, chairman of Limit the Judges, ran into a barrage of opposition to the measure leading up to the election.
Gov. Bill Owens and Colorado’s three living former governors opposed term limits for Colorado’s appellate courts.
“This is a terrible amendment. This is not just a bad idea, it’s a terrible amendment,” former Democratic Gov. Roy Romer said of Amendment 40.
John Moye, chairman of Vote No 40, said he believed voters knew how illogical term limits would be for the judiciary.
“Judicial independence is the key to the checks and balances of our system,” Moye said. Had it passed, he said, it would have devastated the courts, causing backlogs of cases and gutting the courts of experienced judges.
Also coming out against the amendment was the American Judges Association.
Steve Leben, a Kansas jurist and president of AJA, said that under the U.S. system of government, the executive and legislative branches are political. If the third branch – the judiciary – is not kept out of the political fray, it cannot do its job of providing a check and balance on the other branches, Leben said.
Andrews said this won’t be his last effort to cap judges’ terms.
“We are not going away,” Andrews said. “I expect we will be back on the ballot in 2008.”
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
