Courts

Colorado’s courts play important roles in your life. When you buy or sell goods or property, get married or divorced, have children, work, retire, drive a car, and even after you die, your state courts can protect your rights and enforce your responsibilities. If you are the victim of a crime, are accused of committing a crime, or witness a crime, you may be required to appear in a Colorado court. You may also be called upon to serve as a juror, one of the most important privileges we all share as citizens.

The Colorado Judicial Branch, one of the three branches of government working independently for a common goal: to protect the rule of law, the ideal that our country’s founders worked so hard to reach. 

The Colorado Judicial Branch is charged with two responsibilities: resolving disputes and supervising offenders on probation. By resolving disputes according to the rule of law, the judiciary furthers the founders’ paramount principal that we are a government of laws and not people. No one is above the law; our courts protect individual rights and are open to all. 

Our state court system has four levels of courts: county courts, district courts, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. County courts handle about 450,000 case filings per year, and the district courts – including our seven specially designated water courts – handle about 235,000 cases per year. The 22 judges of the Court of Appeals, sitting in panels of three, handle about 2,500 cases annually, and the seven-member Supreme Court, in which all justices hear each case, receives about 1,500 case filings each year.

Learn more about the Colorado Judicial Branch