More than TABOR suffered defeat in the Colorado Supreme Court’s recent decision

The potential demise of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, TABOR, will dominate political discussion in Colorado for much of the next six months.

The Colorado Supreme Court decision that cleared the path for that debate may contain an even more potent and far-reaching consequence: the weakening of stare decisis and judicial precedent.

When the opinion came out, the dissent from Justice Monica Marquez immediately caught my eye.

Marquez may be my favorite justice on the Colorado bench, even though I know we hold many different perspectives and I don’t always agree with her decisions (particularly when she’s ruled against my clients!).

She writes with precision and clarity and always makes well-reasoned, analytical arguments, frequently with a little bite to them. She may not appreciate it, but in many ways her style reminds me a bit of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

So, when Marquez dissented from the opinion penned by Justice Richard Gabriel, another member of the presumed liberal block, I couldn’t wait to read it and see what drove the disagreement.

Read the rest of this column in the Colorado Sun.