CHRISTINA EICHELKRAUT / PVT State Supreme Court Chief Justice William Maupin talks about his work with students at New Hope Christian Academy. Advertisement

Nevada Supreme Court Chief Justice William Maupin gave students at New Hope Christian Academy what he called "a peek at the Nevada judicial system" along with a chance to ask him questions during his May 23 visit to the school.

Rosemary Clarke Middle School's student council also attended the lecture.

"As you can see, I have pages and pages of a speech there for you, and charts and graphs and a PowerPoint that would absolutely scintillate you, so I decided not to give you any of that," Maupin joked.

Instead, the judge first gave the students a brief overview of the judicial branch, explaining the criminal and civil branches, before going on to tell the students about the slightly winding road that led him into law and the importance of education.

Having come from a long line of doctors going back to the Civil War, Maupin woke up one morning when he was in the seventh grade to a fat medical text book lying next to his bed.

His father told him he might be interested in it.

"I was going to become a doctor, I was going to attend medical school," Maupin explained. "But then something happened in high school that changed all that."

A lawyer showed up for career day at Western High School, where Maupin attended, and he decided to check out what the lawyer had to say.

"He came in and said we don't make as much money as doctors, our clients are not as grateful for our services as doctors, and I said, 'I have to become a lawyer then,'" Maupin explained. "I changed that day my life decision and decided to be a lawyer."

Maupin certainly has no regrets and passionately conveyed that to the assembled students.

"Being a lawyer, more than anything else, is about helping people," Maupin said. "It's also about protecting people from the power of the government to incarcerate a private citizen or to enforce the taking or giving money to private citizens. It's also about helping people get through the process of family disputes when unfortunately they occur."

The students had plenty of questions for Maupin, who took time to answer each of them at length.

One student questioned whether Maupin's personal moral compass made it harder for him to make decisions while sitting on the bench.

"I've never had any trouble with enforcing the law, but I have a lot of faith in the system," Maupin answered. "I'm in a unique position, though, because I can change the rules," he added.

"I'm a member of the court that is at the head of the legal system in this state," he explained. "And if there is law that's unconstitutional, for example, we can declare it so. Or if there is unfair result and it offends the legal principles we can say so and change it."

In his 12 years on the Nevada Supreme Court, Maupin said, he had signed about 24,000 decisions, about 200 of which he said "involved some important social change, the case decision reflected the development of the human condition."

Another student wanted know why, when candidates who ran for office often campaigned on promises to change laws but ultimately those laws were never changed.

"No one person in this country has the power to affect that kind of change just by fiat, and change a law just by waving a wand," Maupin explained. "The system we live in is a democracy, so you have to have the collaboration of other people in the government to affect that kind of change."

One teacher asked about lawsuits in which plaintiffs were awarded large amounts of money for seemingly trivial matters, giving the example of the woman who won millions of dollars in punitive damages from McDonald's when she spilled hot coffee on herself.

"There are a lot of (lawsuits) that seem silly and most of them don't get very far," Maupin conceded. "But most of these things, for example, are about consumer protection."

The chief justice went on to point out that it took a tragic accident and the resulting lawsuit to unearth the discovery that Ford had deliberately decided it was cheaper to build its Pinto car without a firewall in front of the gas tank than spend the money to fix or recall the vehicle.

"For years automobiles were manufactured based upon internal management considerations about, 'We will pay the cost of our lawyers and that will cost us less than paying for making the car safe,'" Maupin explained. "So about 40 years ago the court system began to respond to that. Pretty soon it got pretty expensive to make the cars unsafe."

Maupin was not the only legal representative to shed some light on the judiciary for the students.

Deputy District Attorney Kirk Vitto and Nye County Public Defender Tom Gibson also shared with the students their own stories of how they came to practice law and what it meant to them to be part of the legal system.

Gibson, who described his journey to becoming a lawyer as "a long and hard road with a lot of good turns," took some of the perceived luster off his profession and gave the students some advice about reality.

"If you ever decide you want to go to law school, think good and hard, because it isn't what it used to be," Gibson said. "It used to be to get rich as a lawyer, and now we just make a living like everybody else. But it can be very rewarding, and if you want to put in the extra time and the extra finances it takes to go law school, it can be well worth it."

Vitto, who had a more meandering path to his position, said he enjoyed the chance he got every day "to champion a victim."

"I can't tell you what it's like to have a victim come into my office who's been wronged, who's been the victim of a crime, and to begin to put together a criminal prosecution and to ... bring that story before a jury," Vitto said.

Maupin finished the lecture with a dose of historical perspective for the students to consider. "It's all about protecting the citizens of the government from the legitimate -- and sometimes illegitimate -- power of the government."