Rose looks at options after Supreme Court service

Friday, Dec. 23, 2005 | 8:47 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- He's been a district attorney, lieutenant governor, District Court judge and now Bob Rose is reprising his role as chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court.

He's had a number of highs and some lows during his 27 years in office. And at 66, he says it's "just the right age" to retire.

"I love my job but there is just too much of it," he said.

Rose will become chief justice succeeding Nancy Becker in January and will hold the post until his present six-year term expires in 2007.

Rose, who graduated from New York University's law school, started his legal career at the Nevada Supreme Court as a law clerk for the 1964-65 court term. There were three justices and eight staff members then, when the court handled 100 cases.

"I thought we were breaking our backs," Rose said.

Today the court has seven justices and a staff of more than 100. And its caseload exceeds 2,000 a year.

Rose's first political victory was the Washoe County district attorney's race in 1970, when he succeeded the retiring Bill Raggio, now Nevada Senate majority leader.

Four years later Rose, a Democrat, defeated Raggio in the race for lieutenant governor.

Rose recalls one of his first meetings after the election with Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, who won a second term as governor.

"I was all puffed up," he said in an interview in his court office. But then O'Callaghan told Rose, who lived in Reno at the time, that he liked to have the lieutenant governor live in Las Vegas, as Harry Reid had done during O'Callaghan's first term. Reid is now the minority leader in the U.S. Senate.

Rose quotes the late O'Callaghan as saying, "One of us has to move to Las Vegas, and it's not going to be me."

So Rose packed his bags and his family and moved to Las Vegas.

One of his big moments as lieutenant governor came when he presided as Senate president in 1977. The Equal Rights Amendment, then a political hot potato, was up for passage in the Senate. It had failed in two prior sessions in the Assembly.

The lieutenant governor breaks a tie, and at that time there were 20 senators. Two of the ERA's opponents in the Senate left the floor and the vote was 10-8 in favor of it. Eleven votes were needed for passage.

But Rose, in a parliamentary maneuver before a packed Senate chambers, ruled that the two absent members should be counted as against the amendment, making it a 10-10 tie. He then cast the deciding vote to move the resolution out of the Senate to the Assembly.

"It was a very emotional issues," he said. Nevada was one of a handful of states needed to get the necessary number to ratify ERA.

After his tie-breaking vote he was mobbed by women kissing him and others carrying anti-ERA signs that came close to hitting him. He closeted himself in his office for two hours to avoid the demonstrations.

"We sent it (the resolution) to the Assembly where in spite of O'Callaghan's and my best efforts, it was defeated five days later," he said. "I think when I ran for governor the next year (1978), it had serious negative impacts on me."

Rose was defeated by then Republican Attorney General Robert List. He retired to private law practice in Las Vegas after his defeat.

But in 1986, he was appointed to the District Court bench by Gov. Richard Bryan to succeed Howard Babcock. Two years later he jumped into the race for Nevada Supreme Court to replace retiring Al Gunderson.

In 1988 and six years later, he was paired against the late District Judge Myron Leavitt.

"Those were the two toughest campaigns of my life," he says. "They were very contentious and they were not pretty."

Later Leavitt was elected to the Supreme Court. "We became pretty good friends. On a lot of issues we were compatible. I miss him," Rose said.

Rose, who lives in Carson City, will finish out his term in January 2007. He says he would like to be designated a senior judge to sit on cases to fill in at the District or Supreme Court level.

And he intends to be active during this coming year as chief justice.

Rose has been chief justice twice. During his 17 years, he has pushed improvements of the judicial system, including improvements to the jury system and court record keeping.

Now the court has to plan for the future because the appeals are coming in faster than the court can handle them, he said. This year, there were at least 100 more cases filed than the previous year.

Each justice handles more than twice the national average for appellate judges, Rose said.

The options include creating an intermediate court of appeals or expanding the Supreme Court to nine justices with three panels of three judges each, he said. It would take a constitutional amendment to start an intermediate court and that couldn't be accomplished until 2010. It would have to be approved twice by the Legislature and then ratified by the voters.

He said a study to improve the internal workings of the court should be completed in the next month or so. There may be some streamlining of the handling of appeals so the court would have more time to work on the bigger cases.

Rose's goals for the next year include:

Cy Ryan can be reached at (775) 687-5032 or at cy@lasvegassun.com.