The Nevada Supreme Court overall has regained much of the respect it lost as a result of earlier controversial decisions, results from the 2006 Judicial Performance Evaluation survey of Clark County lawyers indicate.

Chief Justice Robert Rose suggested they won it by two years of hard and productive work.

At least 70 percent of the lawyers polled electronically recommended each of the seven justices be retained if he or she chooses to run again. The justices' scores for questions about judicial competence and ethics seemed even stronger; the lawyers rated every justice not only adequate, but more than adequate, in at least 51 percent of the lawyers' responses regarding job-related traits.

The highest retention score, 89 percent, was given to Justice Ron Parraguirre, who was elected to the court in 2004 and has not yet endured any firestorm so politically damaging as the 2003 case of Guinn v. Legislature, which said lawmakers could ignore a provision in the Nevada Constitution requiring a two-thirds majority vote to raise taxes. The lawyers also rated him "more than adequate" in 59 percent of all their responses to questions about legal knowledge, integrity and other job-related attributes. One lawyer commented anonymously, "Humble, yet thoughtful. If my life depended upon a judicial decision, this is a judge I would want deciding the case."

Justice James Hardesty, elected the same year, had a retention score of 84 percent and more-than-adequate responses of 60 percent. His highest marks were on issues of integrity, coming to court prepared and fairness. Justice Michael Douglas, appointed in 2004 to an unexpired term upon the death of Justice Myron Leavitt, had a retention score of 81 percent and a more-than-adequate score of 59 percent.

However, the court's very highest score on desirable judicial traits went to Justice Mark Gibbons, who was rated "more than adequate" on 65 percent of the responses, and 86 percent of the lawyers recommended he be retained on the court. Gibbons concurred in the majority opinion of Guinn v. Legislature, so his good scores suggest that a justice's vote in that case may no longer be the political shibboleth it once was. In the election of 2004, the opinion's author, Justice Deborah Agosti, chose not to seek re-election.

The attorneys also gave high scores to Justice William Maupin, who is known for his lone but mild dissent in Guinn. He received a 63 percent "more than adequate" score, and 87 percent said he should be retained. "I get more benefit out of seeing the qualitative analysis, more so than the retention scores," said Maupin after he was told his own scores in preparation for an interview. "I use these as an opportunity to assess my own performance on the court and try to adjust to do better."

Evaluated every two years since 1994, when he was on the Clark County District Court, and since 1998 on the Supreme Court, he always has had high scores. The trait lawyers most appreciated this year was doing his homework by familiarizing himself with the case record, then fairly weighing all evidence and arguments before making a decision; 68 percent of the 244 lawyers who rated him considered him more than adequate in that respect.

Two of the court's central personalities, Chief Justice Robert Rose and veteran Justice Nancy Becker, were not so well-liked, but each was recommended for retention by 70 percent of the lawyers.

Becker also was deemed more than adequate in 51 percent of responses on job-related traits. One of her best scores was 53 percent more than adequate on preparation and fairly hearing both sides, yet 24 percent of the lawyers questioned her impartiality with respect to parties or attorneys involved in an action. "She clearly has a bias in favor of large corporations over individuals," charged one attorney in the anonymous comments attorneys are encouraged to submit.

Another criticized her as author of "the Pappas decision, which allowed the taking of a family run business so the casinos could have a parking garage paid for with public funds" in downtown Las Vegas.

Becker responded, "If a particular person lost on a given case, sometimes it's easier to think that a judge had a particular bias than that the judge just disagreed with you." She noted that the cases specifically mentioned in negative comments were older ones and that her scores this year are about the same as two years ago.

Certain key questions on the survey were cross-tabulated by the gender of respondents and showed that female lawyers responded more favorably to Becker than did male attorneys. "I think that is just a product of how our society has evolved, and as more and more women are on the bench and achieve equal standing, that will probably disappear," said Becker. The majority of each gender recommended Becker be retained.

Rose was rated more than adequate in 56 percent of the responses. His highest scores were for freedom from racial, ethnic, gender or religious bias, but 24 percent of the respondents said he is inadequately objective about parties or attorneys involved in court cases. The lawyers who elaborated on that perception in written comments, however, were inconsistent in identifying the targets or beneficiaries of perceived bias, a couple calling him "anti-law enforcement" or "anti-death penalty," the latter apparently referring to a court decision that narrowed conditions under which a prosecutor may seek the ultimate penalty in Nevada. And others seemed to interpret the same decision positively; one called him "a moderate voice in criminal matters in an increasingly reactionary court."

Rose said: "I am pleased with the results given my length of service. Over the years, I have seen a number of judges' scores go down the longer they stay here. I think it's because you make more decisions. When you're new here, everybody loves you. But when you've been around 17 years, you handle some controversial cases, and people love you or hate you. We had the Whitehead case and Guinn v. Legislature."

The Whitehead case was a bitter controversy in the 1990s that polarized both the Nevada Bar and the Supreme Court. It resulted in Washoe County Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead retiring from the bench. Two justices also retired rather than face re-election.

But Rose thinks his legacy, after his retirement at the end of this year, will lie less in the stands he had to take on difficult cases than in administrative decisions. "I think my legacy will be the judicial reform of the Nevada court system," he said.

Although the Nevada Constitution clearly states that the Supreme Court heads the entire court system, said Rose, the court rarely had invoked that power until recent years. During his years on the court, the justices dusted off that authority, imposing a uniform system of judicial records and ending an era in which different district courts kept records in different ways.

Rose explained: "Now you can use this information as a management tool, for decisions such as to decide the workload of districts and the workload of each judge. And perhaps more important, it contributes to public accountability."

With Agosti, Rose co-chaired the Nevada Jury Improvement Commission whose recommendations ultimately made jury service less stressful and more meaningful, increasing jurors' pay and requiring that jurors be allowed to ask questions during a trial and be given notebooks to keep their own notes.

Rose also was the architect of the addition of two justices to the court, enabling it to handle cases more promptly by hearing some of them in smaller panels.

Several of the lawyers saw Rose's pending retirement as the end of a selfless career. Said one, "Here's a guy who could have made many times what he earned on the bench as a private attorney, but dedicated his most legally productive years to public service."