Nevada Finally Gets a Court of Appeals By Micah S. Echols Following the November 4, 2014 election, the voters of Nevada approved a constitutional amendment for the creation of a new Court of Appeals for Nevada. The creation of the Court of Appeals comes at a critical time when the Nevada Supreme Court has consistently ranked as one of the nations busiest appellate courts. Quite often, cases filed in the Nevada Supreme Court would take several years to resolve because of the Courts heavy workload. The Supreme Courts workload also prevented it from publishing case law as often as it wanted to-causing novel legal issues to be repeated in the lower courts without any resolution. The new Court of Appeals will provide relief to the Nevada Supreme Court to allow Nevadas judiciary, as a whole, to operate more efficiently, with only a minimal fiscal impact to the taxpayers. Appeals from adverse decisions in the district courts will still initially be processed by the Nevada Supreme Court Clerk. However, broad categories of cases will then be assigned to the Court of Appeals. The types of cases assigned to the Court of Appeals will focus on theories of error correction-when there is an argument that the existing law in Nevada was improperly applied. By having the Court of Appeals handle the great majority of error-correction cases, the Nevada Supreme Court will be able to focus on cases presenting issues of first impression-legal issues that have not yet been ruled upon in Nevada. The Court of Appeals will not simply add another layer of litigation because the ability of parties to seek further review after an adverse Court of Appeals decision will be discretionary and severely limited, much like the United States Supreme Court. Initially, the Court of Appeals will operate with three Judges and their staff in the existing Supreme Court facilities. The Supreme Court has buildings in both Carson City and Las Vegas where it currently hears oral arguments. So, oral arguments before the Court of Appeals will be scheduled in the same buildings when the Supreme Court is not in session. By sharing the same buildings and the Clerk as the Supreme Court, the fiscal impact of the new Court of Appeals is largely the salaries of the three new Judges and their staff. However, the impact of the Court of Appeals on the efficient administration of justice is expected to be tremendous. The Supreme Court Justices can now have more time to focus on the weightier issues of Nevada law instead of appeals such as challenges to drivers license revocations. This additional time will, in turn, allow cases to move through the appellate process more quickly and provide an avenue for the Supreme Court to create more precedent for issues of first impression to provide guidance to businesses and the public.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 18:46:27 +0000
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