For Supreme Court

Two seats on the state's highest court are on the ballot this year, with one incumbent hoping to return and two newcomers seeking to replace a retiring justice.

In the race for Seat B, which opened when Justice Bill Maupin opted to not run again, Mary "Kris" Pickering, 55, faces Deborah Schumacher, 53.

Ms. Schumacher has been a Family Court judge in Washoe County since 1997. She says she would add a unique perspective to the Nevada Supreme Court with her experience in family law. She admits to being somewhat ambivalent about a justice's administrative duties, preferring instead to emphasize her passion for constitutional interpretation.

"I'm interested in the process of the clear interpretation of the law," said the Notre Dame Law School graduate. "I enjoy taking on those legal challenges and grappling with them."

Ms. Schumacher received an 87 percent retention rating in a survey by the Washoe County Bar Association. Her campaign has emphasized her judicial experience, given that her opponent, Ms. Pickering, has never been a judge.

But Ms. Pickering, an attorney for nearly 30 years, says she's running as a "skilled advocate" who has experience preparing cases at both the Supreme Court and federal appellate court level.

She argues that judicial experience is "vastly overrated" as a requirement for the job, citing well-respected jurists such as William O. Douglas and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had never served on the bench before being nominated to sit on the nation's highest court and his state's highest court, respectively.

Ms. Pickering, a Yale graduate who received her law degree from the University of California, Davis, has an extensive legal background in Nevada and has a proven record of refusing to flinch in tough situations -- particularly when her law firm of Morris Pickering & Peterson was caught up in the high court's Whitehead scandal in the 1990s, battling against secret judicial discipline.

Brisk and articulate, she expresses a distaste for legal activism and possesses a temperament that most attorneys would appreciate on the bench.

While there are two good candidates in this race, we believe Kris Pickering would be more likely to recognize and enforce government's constitutional boundaries.

For Seat D, incumbent Chief Justice Mark Gibbons faces Thomas Frank Christensen.

Mr. Christensen is a personal injury attorney who has been practicing law for 27 years. The Brigham Young Law School graduate says he decided to run because too many court decisions are politically motivated, particularly the controversial 2003 Guinn v. Legislature ruling, in which Justice Gibbons joined the majority.

But Mr. Christensen isn't running a very high-profile campaign and admits "you probably shouldn't" endorse his candidacy.

Meanwhile, Chief Justice Gibbons, running for his second term, was the highest rated state Supreme Court justice in the Review-Journal's 2008 judicial survey, with an 86 percent retention rating. He calls Guinn v. Legislature -- in which the court said lawmakers could ignore a constitutional provision requiring two-thirds support for tax hikes -- "the biggest mistake" of his life. "It's embarrassing that I signed it," he said.

To his credit, the chief justice played a role in the court's eventual repudiation of the ruling.

Chief Justice Gibbons has a track record of favoring open records and open government. He has consistently been on the correct side of rulings that scold governments for abusing the power of eminent domain.

Administratively, he vows to continue to keep costs down during the current budget crisis -- the high court recently returned a portion of its appropriation to the general fund and has met the governor's target numbers for budget adjustments -- and to increase the number of published opinions issued by the justices.

Mark Gibbons' integrity and knowledge of the law are unquestioned. He is the obvious choice in this race.