JUDGE EDWIN L. FELTER, JR. is the Senior Administrative Law Judge with the Colorado Office of Administrative Courts (OAC), one of the first central panels in the United States. He has been an administrative law judge since 1980. He was the director and chief administrative law judge in Colorado from 1983 through 1998, and in that role he established Colorado’s independent central panel, based on the judicial model of adjudication organizations. Judge Felter is currently responsible for the ethics training for all Colorado administrative law adjudicators, and for in-house judicial training in the OAC. He is also responsible for the OAC law clerk program. In December 2005, he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Prior to becoming an ALJ, Judge Felter served as an assistant attorney general for Colorado, handling civil trials in state and federal courts, as the disciplinary prosecutor for the Supreme Court Grievance Committee (prosecuting lawyers for ethical misconduct), and as a Deputy Colorado State Public Defender (defending indigent, criminally accused individuals). He began his legal career serving as Law Clerk to New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Merle E. Noble. He received his law degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is a certified mediator, American Bar Association (ABA), 2000.

He is past chair of the National Conference of the Administrative Law Judiciary (NCALJ), Judicial Division of the American Bar Association (ABA), 2000/2001. During his term as chair, he successfully guided Resolution 101B (2001) [judicial independence and accountability of ALJs] through final passage by the ABA House of Delegates, by a vote of 279 to 2. In 1997, he guided the “Model Act Creating a State Central Hearing Agency” through unanimous passage by the ABA House of Delegates. He is now in his second three-year term on the Council of the Government and Public Sector Lawyers’ Division (GPSLD) of the ABA [he is GPSLD’s advisor to the Model State Administrative Procedures Act (APA) Drafting Committee of the National Commission on Uniform State Laws (NCUSL), and chair of GPSLD’s Ethics Committee]. He is a member of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the ABA, and he serves on its Oversight Board for the European Union Law Project. He is a member of the International Law Section of the ABA. In 2006, ABA President Karen Mathis appointed Judge Felter to a three-year term on the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility. He is also a member of the International Bar Association (headquartered in the United Kingdom), Judges’ Forum. In June 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the ABA, an honor conferred on 1/3rd of 1% of all lawyers. Judge Felter has been active in the Colorado Bar Association (CBA) since 1974. He is also a member of the Denver and Arapahoe County Bar Associations. He served on the CBA Ethics Committee for many years; was Chair of the Grievance Policy Committee for three years; and, has served on the Inter-Professional Committee since 1996 [the Committee resolves fee disputes between lawyers and physicians; and, with other professionals].

Judge Felter has spoken widely and written numerous articles on administrative law, ethics, medico-legal issues, workers’ compensation and other legal issues. In June 2001, he was a speaker for the opening plenary panel of the Council of Canadian Administrative Tribunals’ (CCAT) International Conference on Universal Values in Administrative Justice in Quebec City, Canada, with Soli Sorabjee, Attorney General of India, Rafael Benitez of the Council of Europe, and Professor Errol Mendes of the University of Ottawa Law School. Judge Felter’s topic was “Judicial Independence: A Universal Value.” He was one of three members of the U.S. Planning Committee for CCAT’s international administrative law conference in Toronto in June 2004. Along with the President of CCAT and an administrative law judge from Louisiana, he presented two ethics workshops in Toronto, which were simultaneously in French and English. He is a member of the Council of Canadian Administrative Tribunals (CCAT). He has been a keynote speaker at the American College of Legal Medicine. He is on the Faculty of the National Judicial College (Reno, Nevada). He has consulted with the states of Hawaii, Wyoming, Pennsylvania and Alaska [in July 2004, Governor Murkowski signed Alaska’s central panel bill into law — the law tracks the ABA Model Act Creating a State Central Hearing Agency]; and, with the Republic of Panama on court administration. He has also consulted with the workers’ compensation judges in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In December 2003, Judge Felter spent one month in Vietnam (as an international expert on best practices in administrative law adjudications) for the STAR Vietnam Project (a USAID funded project). The project assists Vietnamese government agencies with legal and economic reform issues to implement provisions of the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) between Vietnam and the U.S. He returned to Vietnam for two weeks in late March 2006, to assist STAR’s client agency, the Government Inspectorate, to advance its proposal for the creation of a Central Administrative Tribunal of Vietnam.

He won the 1994 National Association of Administrative Law Judges (NAALJ) Fellowship in Administrative Law for his paper, “Adjudication Quality: The Only Way to Reduce Costs and Delays,” 15 Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judges 5 (No. 1, Spring 1995). His article, “Special Problems of State Administrative Law Judges,” 53 Administrative Law Review 403 (2001) [Re-published, 8-10 Law and Justice: Journal of the United Lawyers Association 41 (2001-2003), New Delhi, India], surveys ethical structures for ALJs in the United States. He co-authored (with a former law clerk for the OAC, Sarah Hubbard) “Erosion of the Exclusive Remedy in Workers’ Compensation,” 31 The Colorado Lawyer 83 (December 2002). In January 2004, he received the President’s Award from Professionals in Workers’ Compensation for his long-term contributions to the Colorado workers’ compensation system. His article, “Assignment Vietnam: Administrative Law Reform with a Side of Gumbo,” appears in 12 The Public Lawyer 3 (Summer 2004). Recently, he co-authored, with Michael S. Williams (immediate past director and chief judge of OAC), “A Different Kind of Representative: DBA v. PUC Revisited,” 36 The Colorado Lawyer 53 (No. 12, December 2007).

List of Publications

“Workers Compensation Claims for Heart Attack and Mental Illness,” 33 Medical Trial Technique Quarterly 308 (No. 3, 1987).

“Work Related Heart Attacks and Mental Illness: Medico-Legal Implications,” 31 Trauma 23 (No. 3, Oct., 1989).

“An ALJ’s View: The New Unified Hearings in Workers’ Comp Cases,” 18 The Colorado Lawyer 2327 (No. 12, Dec., 1989).

“Colorado’s Central Panel of Administrative Law Judges: The Hidden Executive Branch Judiciary,” 19 The Colorado Lawyer 1307 (No. 7, July 1990), updated and reprinted in 14 Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judges (NAALJ) 95 (No. 1, Spring 1994)

Workers Compensation Fraud: Trashing the System,” 20 The Colorado Lawyer 1219 (No. 6, June 1991).

“Salvaging the Impaired Physician: Before and During the Disciplinary Proceedings,” 34 Trauma 55 (No.1, June 1992).

“Life After S.B. 218,” 21 The Colorado Lawyer 1425 (No.7, July 1992) [Concerning the 1991 workers’ compensation reform laws].

“The Physician’s Duty to Assist Patients in the Legal Process,” 35 Trauma 81 (No.5, Feb., 1994).

“The Physician’s Duty to Testify,” 36 Trauma 69 (No. 5, Feb., 1995).

“Adjudication Quality: The Only Way to Reduce Costs and Delays,” 15 Journal of NAALJ 5 (No. 1, Spring 1995). [1994 NAALJ Fellowship Award].

“Administrative Law Adjudication for the Twenty-First Century,” 24 The Colorado Lawyer 1993 (No. 5, May 1995) [Feature Article].

“Litigants Without Lawyers,” 25 The Colorado Lawyer 23 (No. 6, June 1996).

“Maintaining the Balance Between Judicial Independence and Accountability in Administrative Law,” 36 The Judges’ Journal 22 (No. 1, Winter 1997) [Judicial Division, American Bar Association]. Reprinted as modified in 17 Journal of NAALJ 89 (No. 1, Spring 1997).

“Special Problems of State Administrative Law Judges,” 53 Administrative Law Review 403 (No. 2, Spring 2001) [Republished in 8-10 Law and Justice 41 (2001-2003, United Lawyers Association, New Delhi, India].

“Erosion of the Exclusive Remedy on Workers’ Compensation,” 31 The Colorado Lawyer 83 (No. 12, December 2002).

“Assignment Vietnam: Administrative Law Reform with a Side of Gumbo,” 12 The Public Lawyer 3 (No. 2, Summer 2004), Government and Public Sector Lawyers Division, American Bar Association.

“A Different Kind of Representative: DBA V. PUC Revisited,” 36 The Colorado Lawyer 53 (No. 12, December 2007).

International Franchising (Editor-in-Chief and contributing author), Continental Reports, Inc., Denver, Colorado (1970).