On May 22, 2025, Chief Justice Herndon of the Nevada Supreme Court announced that he “will file a petition next month with the Supreme Court to approve the creation of the Commission to Study the Adjudication of Business Law with the expectation that the dedicated business court will be operational within a year.”

He explained the need for the Commission:

“We currently have tremendous district judges working very hard on our state’s business law cases and we want to find ways to better support them. We have been closely following the discussion related to Assembly Joint Resolution 8 in the Nevada Legislature and compliment the Legislature for focusing on the desire to greatly improve how the courts resolve complex business matters,” Herndon said. “To that end, I’m confident that within our own court system we can enhance our existing approach to business law cases and create a dedicated court where district court judges hear only business cases and do it without any additional fiscal impact on the state.”

“In addition, we can address the timeliness and efficiency of judicial review of business cases, eliminate the need to amend the constitution and the uncertainty associated with waiting years to see if the resolution gets approved,” Herndon continued.

Earlier this year, the Nevada legislature approved a constitutional amendment to authorize an appointed business court. It’ll need to be approved again in the 2027 session and then pass a referendum to become part of the constitution so it remains years out.

I’m hopeful that shifting resources around within the existing judiciary in the near term can improve case times by allowing the existing bench of elected judges to specialize to a greater degree. If this brings case resolution times down and results in more efficient resolution, I’d be delighted. It’s also the sort of infrastructure change that will make it easier for persons residing outside of Nevada to select Nevada as their preferred jurisdiction for new entities.

And Nevada’s judiciary does appear overworked. In the run up to the constitutional amendment launch, I requested records from the Nevada Judiciary to have data to hand about case resolution times. Statewide statistics were not available, but the Clark County numbers for FY’2024 showed 1,228 days to disposition. ’23 and ’22 were better at 656 and 582 respectively. This still lags far behind Delaware which disposes of about 9 out of 10 motions in under 90 days. Of course, this isn’t a perfect apples to apples comparison as the different courts have different jurisdictions–and Delaware’s Chancery never needs to run a jury trial.

This is how the Nevada Supreme Court described the forthcoming Commission:

The Commission to Study the Adjudication of Business Law will invite stakeholders to participate in promulgating rules for the business court program, identify and create a training /certification process to certify eligible judges for business court, decide how eligible judges will be chosen, and how their opinions are disseminated, among other matters.

According to Herndon, the Commission will include members of the Nevada Legislature, the Governor’s office, judges from district courts, attorneys who specifically practice in the area of business law, representatives of the broader business community and other members of the State Bar of Nevada.

Although I haven’t yet been able to find the Commission to Study the Adjudication of Business Law on the Court’s website or administrative order docket, it appears likely to bring together a community of stakeholders invested in the success of Nevada’s business law.