Review-Journal’s Judicial Performance Evaluation returns ahead of 2026 elections

The Las Vegas Review-Journal is bringing back its Judicial Performance Evaluation, a survey meant to gauge the caliber of Clark County judges and inform voters and potential candidates.

This will be the 14th time since 1992 that the news organization has invited attorneys to participate in the survey. This year’s poll will ask for feedback on 101 jurists: Nevada Supreme Court justices, Nevada Court of Appeals judges, Clark County district judges and judges on lower courts in Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson.

Review-Journal Executive Editor Glenn Cook said the project helps fill a crucial information gap for voters.

“There’s not a lot of information out there for voters in judicial races,” he said. “And judicial elections are complicated by the fact that sitting judges and attorneys who run against them are not allowed to engage in the kind of freewheeling campaigning that you see across other partisan and nonpartisan races.”

The survey will be sent to all attorneys in Clark County via emails and postcards, said Bradley Marianno, director of UNLV’s Center for Research, Evaluation and Assessment, which will conduct the poll for the Review-Journal.

On an honor-system basis, attorneys will be asked to rank only the judges they have appeared before.

Seeking anonymous responses

Cook said the “central measurement” is the retention score: the percentage of attorneys who think a judge should be kept on the bench.

But the survey will go much deeper, asking lawyers to evaluate judges on their familiarity with case records, efficiency in court, consistency of behavior, fairness in weighing evidence, accuracy in applying the law, clarity in decisions and impartiality, Marianno said.

“In my opinion, focusing on the multiple facets of attorney responses relative to the criteria is more important than a single question on whether they should be retained,” he said. “It tells us more about the strengths and weaknesses of the judges.”

The same categories have been used in other judicial performance evaluations, according to Marianno. Seventeen states have a legislative-directed judicial evaluation. He said Nevada is “fairly unique” in having its survey organized by a news organization.

Marianno hopes to exceed the sample size of over 600 attorneys in the previous evaluation. Each attorney will receive a one-time code to prevent anyone from responding multiple times. The feedback is anonymous, and Marianno said surveyors will not be able to link a response back to an individual attorney.

The survey will be sent out July 8 and close Aug. 15. The Review-Journal intends to publish the results sometime in the fall.

Identifying best, worst judges

“We believe this survey is especially accurate in identifying the very best judges in Clark County and the very worst judges in Clark County,” Cook said. “The goal of this survey is not to communicate to voters with precise accuracy who’s the 30th best judge and who’s the 31st best judge. That’s not what we’re trying to do here. By publishing the judicial performance survey in the fall, it’s our hope that the legal community will pay attention to the results and see fit to identify potential challengers to run against the judges who perform the poorest in this survey.”

Early in the survey’s history, it was conducted every two years, Cook said. But starting with the 2014 election cycle, all District Court and Family Court judges were on the ballot at the same time, and since then, the survey has been conducted less frequently.

The last Judicial Performance Evaluation was conducted in 2019. All District Court and Family Court judgeships will be on the ballot in 2026.

“Judges have awesome power,” Cook said. “They have the power to deprive you of your liberty (and) to order you to surrender your property. So voters owe it to themselves to ensure the most qualified and fairest people possible are wearing the robe.”

Questions about the survey may be directed to the UNLV research center at createam@unlv.edu or 702-895-4196.

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.