About the Judicial History Database

Description

The Nevada Judicial History database contains information regarding the judges and when they served in the courts of Nevada since the beginning of statehood.

Where known or available, each entry includes the judge’s full name, election date, start and end dates of term, how they ended their term.

Using the Nevada Judicial History database

The entries may be searched by judge name, judicial position, court, department, or county, and the number of results returned may be limited. A search may be completed using one or more of these criteria. The list of results from the criteria will provide basic information with the possibility of additional information available when you click on the View link on the right column.

For example, if there was interest in knowing all the judges that served as Supreme Court Justice in Seat A, Supreme Court would be selected in the Court drop down list and the letter A would be included in the Department/Seat field.

Citing the Nevada Judicial History database

Published references to information found on the site should use the citation:

Nevada Administrative Office of the Courts, Nevada Judicial History Database, https://nvcourts.gov/aoc/judicialhistory, accessed 20xx.

How the Nevada Judicial History database was compiled

The impetus for creating this searchable database was the many requests for history of a judge or a particular judicial office. These requests were handled by Administrative Office of the Courts staff. While there were several sources available to research the information, there was not a central repository for the results.

The Political History of Nevada, published on occasion by the Secretary of State contains the judicial history for the Supreme Court and District Courts throughout Nevada since before statehood.

In the 1980s, the Nevada Judicial Historical Society sponsored a project to put all the county judicial election information into one binder. This information was gathered and typed by volunteers from all the election canvass results.

When the Nevada Judicial History database project began, the information from both of these documents was entered into the database. Additionally, all research and histories available within the Administrative Office of the Courts was added. Lastly, as AOC staff became aware of efforts by courts around Nevada to document their history of judicial officers, information from those compilations were added.

As part of the effort to fill in gaps of information or confirm dates that were noted differently in multiple sources, additional research was performed in the Nevada State Library and Archives or online in records such as marriage certificates or obituaries.