Senior Judges in Nevada
Those not involved with the legal system may not be familiar with a “Senior Judge.” Under the Supreme Court Rules, the Nevada Supreme Court may appoint retired judges to hear cases as if they were still an active judge. Many believe there are constitutional issues with this rule. A retired judge becomes “active” without having been elected by the people to serve as a judge. This system may also violate the “One Judge One Family Rule” set forth in NRS 3.025(3). There are constitutional, political, intellectual and practical problems with this rule. Proponents of the rule will tell you that it “saves money” and helps an overburdened judicial system. No doubt district courts were overburdened several years ago, but that is no longer the case. Perhaps it saves money in the short term, but in the long term, it appears that it is costing the taxpayers substantially more than any benefit.
My limited research suggests that a judge can retire after 20-30 years and receive close to his or her average highest pay of the last three years of employment. A judge can serve 20 years and receive retirement for 30 years or more. More important, the taxpayers are getting hit twice. Let’s say the Senior Judge retires after 20 years and only receives 75% of his or her former pay. The judge then goes back to work after retirement as a senior judge, doing the exact same job, receives 75% of former pay, and close to 100% additional pay, for doing the same job, with less hours and less responsibility. Not only is the judge then receiving more than 150% of regular pay for working less and having less responsibility, but the hours the judge works after retirement also increase the amount the judge receives for retirement. After a judge qualifies for retirement, why wouldn’t he or she want to avoid another election and get paid 50% more and increase his or her retirement benefits? Senior judge time is understandably competitive amongst the retired judges. Not only are the judges being paid more for doing less, but they are increasing their retirement benefits.
Beyond the retirement issue, although the judges are theoretically accountable to the supreme court, they are not accountable to the voters. The voters have repeatedly rejected the appointment of judges and the senior judge rule has to some extent undermined the will of the electorate in this regard.
Moreover, this system, at least in family court, is inefficient. You have a judge who may have heard a case for more than a year, call in sick the day of the trial, and now a judge, who may or may not have ever practiced family law or been a family court judge, makes decisions that will impact a family for years. The rule provides that one judge will hear a case, but the senior judge system completely undermines this rule. Lawyers are often frustrated because we are not given any notice that a new judge may be hearing a case on a particular day. In the “old days,” if a judge was sick another sitting family judge would hear the matter or the hearing would be continued until the assigned judge returned. Not anymore. Too many retired judges are benefitting and sitting judges are taking advantage as well. Sitting judges may abuse the system by “being sick” on days that they have a complicated or messy trial and would rather defer the “tough work” for the senior judge, who is not accountable for a decision that may be controversial.
I do not have the statistics, and I do not even know if they are tracked, but I would speculate there is at least one judge who has missed more than one hundred judicial days of work in the past term. If we assume that a senior judge gets paid $500.00 per day, if a judge misses 30 days a year, that’s $15,000.00. If one half of the judges miss 30 days a year, that $150,000.00. Again, these are arbitrary numbers, I have not done the research. But it may be interesting to see how many days senior judges were used in family court and how much per day in actual salary it cost the taxpayer, exclusive of the enhanced retirement that the taxpayers also pay.
In sum, I am certainly not arguing that every senior judge and every sitting judge who utilize the system is abusing it, but it is a system that is not efficient and appears to be expensive.
*This is an editorial by Bruce Shapiro of Pecos Law Group and the opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the other attorneys at Pecos Law Group.