Pickering found inspiration at Yale

NEVADA Supreme Court Justice Kristina Pickering was among the second class of undergraduate women admitted to Yale University.

She said she encountered few obstacles as a woman in the male-dominated class entering the Ivy League school in 1970.

“I quickly adapted,” the 66-yearold Pickering said. “There was no bias or prejudice. At least if there was, I didn’t feel myself a victim of it.”

But it was on the campus in New Haven, Connecticut, while an English major, that she developed an interest in the law.

In April 1974, a group of students, including some of Pickering’s friends, were disciplined after a “chanting, stomping, hand-clapping” demonstration against a Stanford University physics professor’s controversial theories.

“That was kind of a turning point for me,” she said. “It led me to think critically about how we are better when we listen to one another and speak. You can expose the fallacies of what others say, but civil discourse is important. That’s what the hallmark of the law is.”

Pickering went on to receive her law degree from the University of California, Davis.

After graduating, she worked as a clerk for then-U.S. District Judge Bruce Thompson in Reno, where she grew up.

She said she tries to emulate Thompson’s “no-nonsense, completely unbiased” demeanor on the bench. Thompson died in 1992.

Las Vegas attorney Don Springmeyer, whose subsequent clerkship with Thompson overlapped with Pickering’s, called Pickering “whip smart, very fair and not possible to intimidate.”

He has worked alongside her under the judge, battled her in court while she worked for the commercial litigation defense bar and argued before her while she sat on the state’s high court.

“She is one of the most prepared and penetrating, questioning justices on the court,” Springmeyer said. “Although she’s unfailingly polite, she does not back down.” According to a January 2009 story in Nevada Lawyer magazine, Pickering was one of the first 100 women admitted to practice law in the state.

First elected in 2008, she is the only current justice who had not previously served as a judge on a lower court.

Pickering said she attempts to focus on the issues before her, rather than making “expansive pronouncements,” when crafting decisions and dissents.

“You want to decide the case in front of you adequately, but you shouldn’t be venturing into making up rules for other cases that the facts in dispute in your case don’t require you to do,” she said.

The justice said she considers her role a “humble one.”

Pickering and her husband, attorney Steve Morris, own about 100 acres in the ghost town of Belmont, the former seat of Nye County, about four hours from Las Vegas.

They helped establish Friends of the Belmont Courthouse to restore the building, which closed in 1903.

“Preserving that has become a real labor of love,” Pickering said.

She is one of the most prepared and penetrating, questioning justices on the court. Although she’s unfailingly polite, she does not back down.’ Don Springmeyer Attorney