Page:Bench and bar of Colorado - 1917.djvu/31

Rh The abolishment of the Criminal and Superior courts in Denver had been foreshadowed by an act of the Sixth General Assembly in 1887, when it had increased the number of the Arapahoe County district judges to two and had created two additional districts. In order to provide enough judges in Arapahoe County to dispose of all of the business which the district court was bound to receive as the result of the doing-away with the Superior and Separate criminal courts, the Seventh General Assembly increased the number of the divisions of the district court to four, with a judge for each. The next general assembly, in 1891, added still another judge.

Though the population of Denver has more than doubled since, the number of judges has remained the same. Repeated efforts, the last before the Twenty-second General Assembly in 1917, to induce the law-making body of the state to increase the number of judges have failed. The natural result is a badly congested docket. The judges are not to blame for this condition of affairs. They work hard and earnestly; new cases simply are brought faster than the judges can dispose of them, if they wish to give them that consideration which they should give them.

At the same time that Arapahoe County was given five district judges, the General Assembly redistricted the entire state. A bill was passed dividing the state into thirteen judicial districts. These thirteen districts remain today as fixed by this bill. Elsewhere in this volume will be found a list of the districts and of the counties embraced by each of them and of the judges holding court in them today. Though the districts have not been changed since 1891, the number of judges has been increased from time to time. In 1893 the tenth or Pueblo District was given a second judge. Two years later the number of judges in the fourth or Colorado Springs district was increased to two. In 1903 the eighth district was given a second judge and the fourth a third. A second judge was provided for the third district in 1915. The number of judges remained unchanged until the