CARSON CITY, NEV. — The Nevada Supreme Court this morning will begin weighing the constitutionality of a proposal to ban judges from personally soliciting or accepting campaign contributions, an important issue in the struggle to clean up and modernize the state's troubled judiciary.
The measure, part of a wide-ranging reform effort, would put Nevada in line with most other states' codes of conduct that guide the behavior of judges.
First, however, the court's justices want to ensure that the ban would not represent an unconstitutional limit on judges' free speech.
Since states have added such provisions to their judicial codes of conduct, that issue has divided courts across the country; the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to resolve the matter.
Nevada Supreme Court justices have suggested that they sympathize with a federal appellate ruling in 2002 holding that allowing judges to raise campaign funds "does not suggest that they will be partial if they are elected."
But Washoe County, Nev., District Judge Brent Adams -- who petitioned the court earlier this year to approve the measure -- has argued in court documents that the appellate ruling and others like it are "seriously flawed," largely because they fail to address "the appearance that justice was for sale."
Adams has become a leading voice for Nevada judicial reform, but he will not be able to attend today's hearing to argue for the measure because he is presiding over a complex civil trial.
Adams said he was given no advance notice of the hearing date. When he learned of the date, he said, he immediately contacted Supreme Court justices to ask them to postpone the hearing, but received no response.
"I don't understand it, to tell you the truth," Adams said. "I'd like to be present. If they want to go ahead without me, that's their prerogative."
Adams said the hearing schedule was particularly confounding because Chief Justice Robert E. Rose recently created a "blue ribbon commission" -- dubbed the Article 6 Commission, after the section of the state Constitution establishing the courts -- to "study all aspects" of the judiciary.
The commission includes judges, court administrators, attorneys, legislators and "lay members," including business leaders. It will hold its first meeting this month and would seem, Adams said, a good venue to debate the merits of his proposal.
