Court wants to let more people join in evaluating judges

A Nevada Supreme Court commission wants to expand the groups of people who participate in judge evaluations from only attorneys, as is the standard nationwide, to jurors and others in an effort to mitigate perceived bias.

That was the message delivered to the high court's Article 6 Commission last week, so named because Article 6 of the Nevada Constitution spells out the duties and authority of the judiciary.

Currently, attorneys in Clark and Washoe counties are surveyed every other year regarding judicial performance, but there are concerns regarding unintended bias and attorney abuse. The Las Vegas Review-Journal conducts the Clark County survey every even-numbered year. Polling in Nevada's most populous county is under way and concludes March 8.

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron Parraguirre noted the evaluations are "very useful to the voting public and to judges" that use the results to improve the way they interact with attorneys and others with whom they come into contact.

To that end, one of the commission's main objectives is to expand who participates. The current surveys involve only attorneys, but the pilot project went beyond that to include jurors, court staff, and other judges. Litigants also would be involved if a reliable way to maintain their contact information is developed.

The Review-Journal pays for the Clark County survey, and the Washoe County Bar funds the northern survey, but a state survey would cost taxpayers more than $300,000 to implement, according to the project adviser, Dr. Jim Richardson of the Grant Sawyer Center for Justice Studies in Reno.

According to University of Nevada, Las Vegas researcher and political science professor Dr. Rebecca Wood, more is at issue than cost.

"A state-sponsored (judge evaluation) system could compromise the integrity of the survey," she said.

The main concern for members of the commission, which includes state Supreme Court justices, district judges, attorneys, academics and others, appears to be a built-in, albeit unintentional, bias.

UNLV professor Sylvia Lazos, who co-authored the report with Wood, noted roughly 20 states have a system in place to evaluate judges and all of them contain questions that are inherently and substantially biased against women and minorities.

This could be remedied by taking special care in how questions are worded, she said.

The surveys become even more problematic if voters in November decide judges should be appointed rather than elected.

According to the UNLV researchers, women and minorities are significantly more likely to be elected to the bench rather than appointed. "The evidence on this is empirical," Lazos said.

"I don't think there's a particular problem with the Review-Journal survey," said Wood, who suggested judges who survived a re-election campaign probably don't either. However, there is evidence certain judges have been targeted by the Clark County Bar, fairly or not. It isn't uncommon, Wood said, for hundreds of lawyers to rate a judge even if they've never appeared in his or her courtroom.

The results often dim re-election hopes and impact reputations, Wood suggested.

The overriding benefit, she said, is that the evaluations have proven "very helpful in promoting judicial improvement."

Helping judges become better at what they do is essential, they said. The professors in their written report said Nevada is widely considered to be one of the nation's judicial "hellholes," and cited disgraced District Judge Elizabeth Halverson as an example of why this opinion is prevalent.

The evaluations will be even more important if voters decide judges should be appointed rather than win their robes through contested elections. The Legislature agreed voters should decide that issue, which will be on the ballot this November. Under this hybrid "Missouri Plan," voters would periodically decide if judges should be retained.

The results of an evaluation would give voters a recommendation on whether to retain incumbents. The same results would give voters the same recommendation in contested evaluations.

Richardson said the problem with that scenario is that incumbents would have a score, good or bad, while challengers would not.

Contact reporter Doug McMurdo at
dmcmurdo@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135.