Saturday, December 07, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Judging judges in the spotlight
Conference is free, open to the public
REVIEW-JOURNAL
UNLV's Center for Democratic Culture and the Boyd Law School on Tuesday will present a conference titled "Judging the Judges: Should we Elect or Appoint Nevada Judges?"
The daylong event -- which will include as participants judges, attorneys, professors and Review-Journal Editor Thomas Mitchell -- is free and open to the public. It will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Room 102 at the Boyd Law School on UNLV's Maryland Parkway campus.
The conference is part of the Center for Democratic Culture's Justice & Democracy Forum series, which offers a nonpartisan setting for the exchange of views on issues central to Southern Nevada.
Attorneys who attend the conference will be eligible for continuing legal education credit through the Nevada State Bar.
The first session of the conference, "Evaluating Judicial Talent: Surveying, Ranking, and Promoting Judges" will be held from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and will be moderated by UNLV law professor Jeffrey W. Stempel. Among the panelists will be U.S. District Judge Philip Pro; Cam Ferenbach, president, and Constance Akridge, president-elect, of the Clark County Bar Association; District Judge-elect Jackie Glass; John Curtas, member of the Board of Governors of the Nevada State Bar; Donald Carns, UNLV sociology professor; and Nancy Downey of Downey Research Associates.
The second session, "Judicial Elections vs. Judicial Selections," will be held from 1:30 to 4 p.m. and will be moderated by Ted Jelen, professor and chair of UNLV's political science department. Panelists for this session will include Nevada Supreme Court Justice Nancy Becker; Mitchell; Family Court Judge Cynthia Dianne Steel; District Judge Nancy Saitta; and Michael Bowers, professor of political science at UNLV.
A luncheon with conference participants is scheduled from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. and will cost $24 per person.
Tickets for the luncheon are available by sending a reservation request to cdclv@unlv.edu.
Additional information is available by calling Dmitri Shalin, professor of sociology and director of UNLV's Center for Democratic Culture, at 895-0259.
