Page:Bench and bar of Colorado - 1917.djvu/32

28 present year, when the Twenty-second General Assembly saw fit to abolish one of the three judgeships in the fourth district. Today twenty-two district judges are disposing of the business which forty-one years ago four judges were able to handle satisfactorily. The only special court in Colorado today is the Denver Juvenile Court, created by an act of the General Assembly in 1909.

For ten years following Colorado's admission to the Union, the Supreme Court remained the only appellate court of the state. As the years passed and the district courts began to dispose of an ever-increasing number of cases, the number of causes submitted to the Supreme Court for final review grew also until finally the court's docket became as badly congested as that of any district court in the state. Litigants were compelled to wait a year or more before their cases were finally disposed of.

Many attorneys practicing at the bar advocated an increase of the number of judges of the Supreme Court as the best and speediest remedy to bring relief. They, however, were in the minority. Following the example set by a number of eastern states, the General Assembly in 1887 created what was known as the Supreme Court Commission as an auxiliary to the court. Under the provision of the act creating this commission, the Supreme Court judges assigned such cases as they selected to the commissioners, of whom there were three. The commissioners examined these cases and, their examination of the record finished, submitted opinions to the judges for approval. The plan would have worked excellently but for the fact that the judges, in order to be able to approve the opinions submitted by the commission, were compelled to look into the cases themselves to see whether they agreed with the commissioners or not. The result was that as much time was required for the disposition of a case as if a judge had handled the case from the very beginning.

Three years of the Supreme Court Commission convinced lawyers and laymen alike that some other remedy