A new appellate court next door?!

 

The AP reports: Nevada Finally Establishes a Court of Appeals

The quest to create an intermediate appellate Court in Nevada, like the State itself, was truly Battle Born!

On November 4, the Nevada electorate finally, finally, finally, agreed to establish a three-judge state Court of Appeals! The opportunity to create an appellate court from scratch? How fun would that be?! Some snippets from the AP article:

[T]he Nevada Commission on Judicial Selection has received five applications ahead of a 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline, .... Interviews will take place next month, and Gov. Brian Sandoval will appoint the first three judges, at an annual base salary of $165,000. Judges will have to run for election in November 2016 to a six-year term.

The Supreme Court will hold a Dec. 4 hearing to establish rules for the new court, .... Plans call for one of the three appellate judges to serve as chief, and for the court to formulate its own operating procedures. All civil and criminal appeals will still go to the state Supreme Court, which is on pace to render about 2,300 rulings this year. [T]he court has a backlog of 2,167 open cases.
The high court will assign or "push down" about 700 to 800 cases a year to the Court of Appeals, which will have offices in existing space at the Clark County Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas and the Supreme Court building in Carson City.