Judicial-retention elections are traditionally quiet, noncontroversial affairs that barely get attention before Election Day. But a series of decisions made by the Colorado Supreme Court over the past decade has energized opponents of four justices who will be up for retention this fall, including Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey. Critics say the majority of the justices' rulings on property taxes, eminent domain and congressional redistricting have violated the state's constitution or are clearly partisan. 'This Supreme Court is arguably the most partisan Supreme Court in all of the country, and they have a special knack for redefining English words to suit what they need,' said Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a think tank in Golden that describes itself as nonpartisan. 'If some of them do not lose their seat, then the retention system is an absolute joke.' Voters, however, may have a harder time finding yardsticks by which to measure Mullarkey and Justices Nancy Rice, Michael Bender and Alex Martinez. The primary case the court decided that has drawn the ire of such groups as the Independence Institute -- a decision allowing government to keep some property-tax revenue for schools -- related solely to Colorado law and was not subject to review at the federal level. There is no higher authority to declare that the justices either followed established law or grossly departed from accepted legal precedent. In 2000, the justices in question received high ratings on the state's judicial-performance evaluations; another set of evaluations -- grades assigned by lawyers who practice before the judges -- will be made public before the vote. An impartial observer said the rulings in question did not amount to legal malpractice. Richard Collins, professor and director of the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado, says some of the justices' rulings that are under fire could have gone either way but that none of the decisions is unconstitutional. 'None of these cases was just so outer-space that no reasonable person could agree with it,' he said. The court's decision last March on the mill-levy tax freeze in particular upset Caldara and Matt Arnold, a Colorado Army National Guardsman and Arapahoe County blogger. They believe the case is an example of activism on the bench. In that case, the court decided 6-1 in favor of a Democrat- backed law that kept property taxes from decreasing, with money then directed to flow to schools. The Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling that said the 2007 measure violated the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights because voters were not asked if they approved the government's retention of the tax money. Known as TABOR, the amendment to the state constitution -- approved by voters in 1992 -- places limits on government revenue growth and requires that excess revenue be returned to taxpayers unless voters agree to let the government keep the excess. 'That has allowed all the 'fees-a-palooza' going on in the legislature all these years because they know the Supreme Court will not enforce TABOR law,' Caldara said. Justice Allison Eid, a Gov. Bill Owens appointee, was the sole dissenter in the mill-levy case. 'There has never been (and under the majority's opinion today, never will be) a vote of the people authorizing this change in state tax policy,' she wrote. 'Because the majority deprives the people of their right to vote on (the bill) and the $117 million tax increase it permits, I must respectfully dissent from its opinion.' Richard Westfall, who argued the case before the Supreme Court on behalf of the Mesa County Board of Commissioners, says he was disappointed by the majority decision. 'I do believe that the mill-levy case had a strong factual dimension to it that showed that both from the Department of Education's perspective and the local voters' perspective there was absolutely no support for the (bill),' he said. 'However, the Colorado Supreme Court chose to ignore the clear evidence and the findings of fact made by the trial court below. I believe the court did that to reach a predetermined result and therefore, in this particular incidence, the court did not follow the facts of the law as it should.' Collins said the decision on the mill-levy freeze was a 'close case.' 'You can quarrel with that, but to say no reasonable justice could get there is a gross exaggeration,' he said. The backers of Defend Colorado Now, a 2006 initiative that would have denied public services to illegal immigrants, were also disturbed with the court's decision to keep the measure off the ballot. The justices ruled 4-1, with Justice Nathan Coats dissenting and Eid sitting out, that the initiative violated the state constitution, which requires that amendments deal only with a single subject. The court found that Initiative 55 would have decreased taxpayer expenditures that benefit illegal immigrants and denied them administrative services. 'At the heart of the case was the far-fetched invocation of single subject as an unconvincing pretext to reach a political result at any cost,' said John Andrews, former state Senate president and director of the Centennial Institute, a public-policy think tank at Colorado Christian University. Proponents of the measure were also disappointed that the court issued its ruling past the deadline to rewrite the initiative and get it on the ballot. 'They had this in front of them for a long time, and they waited until nearly the end of their allowable time to issue the ruling so that it did paralyze the proponents who were checkmated from starting over,' Andrews said. State rules prevent judges from defending themselves against the criticism until after they have decided whether to seek another term, Colorado Judicial Branch spokesman Robert McCallum said. The four justices up for retention in November, all of whom were appointed by Democratic Gov. Roy Romer and have already faced retention votes previously for their 10-year terms, cannot declare their intentions until May. Arnold said the mill-levy case moved him to start a grassroots organization and website, clearthebenchcolorado.org, that seeks to remove the justices. He wants to use the website as a forum for people to learn about the Supreme Court and read about the rulings. 'I want people to pay more attention to the process,' he said. 'Even if we get a Democratic governor, we can get better justices. ... Slipping through another Mullarkey is not going to happen.' Recently, the movement was bolstered by comments Attorney General John Suthers made about voting against the retention of Mullarkey, Bender and Martinez. Suthers declined to be interviewed about whether he would vote against the justices or which rulings he disagrees with. 