High court long shot for blacks

The court employs 83 people, including 35 lawyers. No blacks or Hispanics are among them. Three are Asian, and one is American Indian.

Across the street in the attorney general's office, only one of the 137 lawyers employed by Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa is black. Three are Hispanic, two are American Indian and one is Asian.

"I would like to see us make additional effort to reach out to schools that have significant black law student populations," Justice Bob Rose says. "We need to do more. That will be one of my goals when I become chief justice next year."

But Rose says the lack of blacks working for the court doesn't translate into adverse decisions involving minorities.

Chief Justice Charles Springer is the only one of the five current justices to have employed a black legal clerk. Justices hire two clerks a year.

"I only had one black applicant who applied, and I hired her," said Springer, who is retiring after 18 years on the court. "Why we don't have more black applicants, I don't know."

Del Papa attributes low pay as the primary reason why she has been unable to hire more black deputies. Two black lawyers on her staff recently left to take better-paying jobs with the University and Community College System of Nevada.

The new law school that opens this fall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has a 5 percent black student population among its 140 students, and Justice Cliff Young figures the school will become a conduit for minorities to find positions on the Supreme Court staff.

American Bar Association figures showed 18 percent of the people who graduated from law schools in 1996 were minorities. In 1986, 9 percent were minorities.

Bryan Scott, president of the Nevada chapter of the National Bar Association, attributes the lack of blacks on the state's Supreme Court and the attorney general's staff to several factors, mainly the under-representation of blacks in law and the lack of minorities in northern Nevada.

His organization of black lawyers has 18,000 members nationwide, but just 56 in Nevada. Scott said no surveys have been done to determine the number of blacks in law in Nevada, but he figures it is fewer than 100. More than 400 blacks should be lawyers to have a number proportionate to the state's black population.

Scott said many young lawyers, including blacks, may not take law clerk positions because of the low pay.

Justice Shearing says that some black lawyers might decide against applying for jobs in Carson City because the town has only a handful of black residents.

"This is not a mecca for black lawyers," she said. "Carson City looks pretty white."

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