December 2006
Justice Nancy Becker Proud of Time on Nevada Supreme Court
by Kristen Bennett, Staff, Nevada Lawyer
At the end of 2006 Justice Nancy Becker will leave the Supreme Court of Nevada, but her accomplishments will continue to positively influence and impact not only the state’s legal and judicial system but the people she has worked so hard to help. A native Nevadan who started her Nevada legal career in 1983, Becker has been a positive role model for the state’s women lawyers by being one of the first to serve in several of Nevada’s court systems. Overall, however, she is proudest of her work to solidify and improve the state’s judicial system, and passionate about improving access to justice for Nevada’s underprivileged and working with the community the legal system serves.
Becker was born in Las Vegas at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital (which later became University Medical Center, and where she was partially paid for “in shoes”) and has spent most of her time and professional career working in and for this state. She attended George Washington University National Law Center in Washington, D.C., and after practicing in DC for a few years she returned to Nevada in 1983, working as a prosecutor in the Las Vegas city attorney’s office.
As a law student she had never conceived of running for public office, only of being an attorney. “I enjoyed my clinical practice program so much in my third year that I decided that that’s really what I wanted to do, practice law and help people,” she says. But while working as a municipal court prosecutor, she saw that there was no mechanism for dealing with people with drug, alcohol and anger management problems other than finding them guilty and sentencing jail time or levying fines, which led to a high recidivism rate. Judges were often hesitant to order programs or suspension of sentences because they didn’t feel they had the inherent authority. Thus, Becker says, “I ran for judge because I wanted to try those types of programs, and implement different ways of dealing with the mentally ill.” In 1987 she became the first woman elected to a municipal judge seat in Nevada.
At the municipal court, Becker developed a system for identifying and treating the mentally ill who came to her court, thereby significantly dropping the rate of repeat offenders. She became a District Court judge in 1989 and was elected to the Supreme Court of Nevada in 1998 and then again in 2002. At all levels and all through her judicial career Becker has worked to make the court system more efficient and accessible. “And that really is why I became a judge, and that’s what I’ve tried to do: improve the system. And I have been involved with a lot of wonderful improvements and a lot of wonderful developments over 20 years.” She says being a judge is more than a full-time job. “It’s a job of public trust, and so you’re expected to do more than just come to work from 9 to 5.”
Becker is especially proud of the work the Supreme Court has accomplished in recent years, including programs and decisions made prior to her joining the court. “The court in the last 10 years really strove to clean up conflicting prior case law, to make decisions on the basis of legal analysis and the facts and not parties or special interest groups,” she says. They worked on innovative projects to improve how both the Supreme Court and District Courts operated.
Also important, she says, are the ways the court has improved its service to the public. Becker and the other justices worked to develop training programs for court personnel so that they could better respond to questions and to assist people as much as possible. They wanted to, she says, “create a more positive experience for people when they have to interact with the court system. Anyone who’s in the courthouse is generally not there for a good reason.” Becker also cites the civil/criminal program implemented in the District Court, which allowed the court system to decrease the time to trial in civil cases by about 18 months, providing better services to the public in that way as well.
Becker also contributed her time to logistics and facilities development in order to help the legal system grow physically. She is extremely proud of the work she did as project head for the Family Court system in Clark County, both the facilities and the programs. “The Family Court building was on-time and under budget,” she notes. The Regional Justice Center building at 200 Lewis Avenue in Las Vegas was also an important project. “To get a facility that’s 800,000 square feet built is not an easy task,” she says, yet the facility has won a number of awards for planning and courthouse development both in its security system and technology system. Other projects she worked on include jails and juvenile facilities for abused and neglected children.
Becker has also worked extensively with the community the court system serves. She helped found the Clark County Pro Bono Project in 1985 and served as its president for 10 years. She is proud of how the project improved access to justice for Nevadans and of “seeing it develop into a strong program, and knowing that we helped hundreds of people, and that lawyers have donated millions of dollars in free legal services to people in the community, particularly abused women and children.” She also served as chair of the Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission, and will continue to serve the commission on a volunteer basis after she leaves the Supreme Court.
She works as well with the community by participating in programs that help children. She is involved with the We the People program, which teaches civics to students on all levels, and the PAYBAC (Professionals and Youth Building a Commitment) program in Clark County, a dropout prevention program. Participants visit middle schools and talk to the students about the ups and downs of their lives in a realistic manner that students can relate to. “It’s not a career day,” she says. “It’s to talk to them about being who they want to be, but understanding that the first step is to graduate from high school.”
“Pro bono and the things I’ve done with kids in elementary, middle and high schools, are the real rewarding aspects of the job,” Becker says. But in the end, being a judge is about people. “Recently I was attending a school program. One of the other participants came up to me and said he wanted to thank me for changing his life. Fifteen years ago I presided over the adoption of his son. For me, it was a part of my job; for him, it was a pivotal experience. Fifteen years later, his words made my day.”
Despite all her work, Becker wants people to know that she enjoys more than just her job. “A lot of people don’t know that I have a life besides being a judge,” she says. She is “Auntie Justice” to a group of young people ranging in age from five months to 24 years old, who are not only her own nephews, but the children of her either current or former secretaries, law clerks and court clerks. Becker says, “I can babysit, change diapers, and talk to the kids. They call me about whatever the latest books are, and the older kids are calling about college choices and what they want to do with their careers.” As a break from her demanding professional life and community service, she enjoys science fiction and collecting comic books, a hobby she has pursued since childhood.