Melissa Hart

Melissa Hart was an American lawyer, law professor and associate justice of the Colorado Supreme Court from 2017 to 2026. Born in 1969 and raised in Denver, she graduated from East High School, earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1991 and a Juris Doctor magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1995, where she edited the Harvard Law Review, won the Sears Prize and competed on the Ames Moot Court championship team. She clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit and later for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens from 1996 to 1997.

After work as a Justice Department litigator in Washington, she joined the University of Colorado Law School faculty in 2001, becoming Schaden Chair and director of the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law and building a national reputation in employment discrimination law. In December 2017 Governor John Hickenlooper appointed her to the Colorado Supreme Court to succeed Allison H. Eid. Voters retained her for a full ten-year term in 2020. On the court she wrote opinions on private riverbed ownership and vacation-pay forfeiture, dissented in a premises-liability case that later prompted the legislature to change the law, and joined the 2023 majority in Anderson v. Trump finding Donald Trump disqualified from Colorado's presidential primary ballot, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned. She later said death threats and a swatting incident at her home followed that ruling.

Hart was a leading voice for access to justice, supporting plain-language court forms, self-represented litigant coordinators and Colorado's licensed legal paraprofessional program in family law. She was the maternal granddaughter of Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor. She married attorney Kevin Traskos in 2001.

Citing continuing health concerns after two concussions in spring 2025 and family health needs, she took leave in late 2025 and resigned effective 5 January 2026, then joined the Judicial Arbiter Group. The Colorado Judicial Branch announced that she died on 1 October 2026. No cause of death was released. Governor Jared Polis ordered flags at half-staff on the day of her memorial and praised her work on family law and fairness. Colleagues across Colorado's legal community remembered her warmth, intellect and public service.