The short answer for “JDCR”
Researchers who arrive at this page searching for “JDCR” are usually looking at a citation or docket note written in shorthand. Nevada does not publish a rule set under that exact acronym. In practice, “JDCR” most often turns out to be a shorthand or mistranscription encountered in the justice-court and district-court rules family — DCR, EDCR, WDCR, or JCRCP, defined below. Rather than guessing which was meant, check the citation against the Nevada Legislature’s Court Rules index, which lists every rule set the state publishes; if an acronym does not appear there, it is not a Nevada rule set.
- Nevada Court Rules index ↗The Legislature’s authoritative index of every published Nevada rule set.
Statutes and regulations: NRS and NAC
Two acronyms in the family are not court rules at all:
- NRS — Nevada Revised Statutes. The state’s codified statutes, enacted by the Legislature. Substantive law and much of Nevada criminal procedure live here, not in a rules set.
- NAC — Nevada Administrative Code. Regulations adopted by state agencies under statutory authority. Relevant when a dispute involves agency action, licensing, or regulatory compliance.
- Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS) ↗Codified Nevada statutes.
- Nevada Administrative Code (NAC) ↗State agency regulations.
Statewide rules adopted by the Nevada Supreme Court
The Nevada Supreme Court adopts the statewide procedural rules. Five sets carry most of the citation traffic:
- NRCP — Nevada Rules of Civil Procedure. Governs civil actions in the district courts: pleadings, discovery, summary judgment, trial.
- NRAP — Nevada Rules of Appellate Procedure. Governs appeals to the Nevada Supreme Court and the Nevada Court of Appeals: notices of appeal, briefing, argument, and submission for decision.
- SCR — Supreme Court Rules. The court’s own rules, including attorney admission and rules adjacent to attorney conduct; SCR 250 governs the qualification of counsel in capital cases.
- RPC — Nevada Rules of Professional Conduct. The ethics rules governing Nevada lawyers.
- DCR — District Court Rules. Statewide rules of practice for the district courts, including the motion-practice framework in DCR 13.
- Nevada Court Rules index ↗Full text of NRCP, NRAP, SCR, RPC, and DCR.
Local rules: district and justice courts
Below the statewide sets sit local rules adopted for particular courts:
- EDCR — Eighth Judicial District Court Rules. Local rules for Clark County (Las Vegas), elaborating civil and criminal practice in Nevada’s largest district.
- WDCR — Washoe District Court Rules. Local rules for the Second Judicial District (Washoe County, Reno).
- JCRCP — Justice Court Rules of Civil Procedure. Civil procedure in Nevada’s justice courts, which handle limited-jurisdiction civil matters.
- Township justice-court rules — individual townships (Las Vegas Township, for example) also publish local justice-court rules layered over the JCRCP.
How the pieces fit together
The sets stack in a rough hierarchy. Statutes enacted by the Legislature (NRS) supply the substantive law and much of the procedural skeleton. Statewide procedural rules adopted by the Nevada Supreme Court (NRCP, NRAP, DCR, SCR, RPC) govern how cases move through the courts. Local district rules (EDCR, WDCR) elaborate statewide practice for a particular judicial district, and justice-court rules (JCRCP plus township rules) govern the limited-jurisdiction courts. A researcher citing procedure in a specific case typically needs two layers at once: the statewide rule and the local rule of the district where the case is pending.
One asymmetry trips up researchers coming from civil practice: Nevada has no freestanding “rules of criminal procedure” set parallel to the NRCP. Criminal procedure lives mainly in the statutes themselves — NRS Chapters 171 through 179 — with NRS Chapter 175 covering procedure at trial. A criminal-procedure question is therefore usually a statute question first and a rules question second.
Reading the citations themselves follows a consistent pattern. A rule citation pairs the set’s acronym with a rule number — “NRCP 56” is Rule 56 of the civil procedure rules, “EDCR 2.20” is Rule 2.20 of the Eighth Judicial District’s local rules, “SCR 250” is Rule 250 of the Supreme Court Rules. A statutory citation pairs “NRS” with a chapter-and-section number — “NRS 176.555” is section 555 of Chapter 176. Once the acronym is resolved to its rule set, the number locates the exact provision within the authoritative text.
- NRS Chapter 175 ↗Criminal procedure on trial.
Using this glossary
This page is a decoder, not a treatise: each entry identifies what a rule set is and where its authoritative text lives, so a citation like “EDCR 2.20” or “SCR 250” can be run to ground in one step. Other pieces in this series go deeper on individual rules — the request-for-submission reference walks through DCR 13 motion practice, and the SCR 250 article covers Nevada’s capital-counsel qualification framework in the context of the serious felony work described on the criminal defense practice page.
The glossary is educational reference material for people researching Nevada courts and is not legal advice. Rule sets are amended, renumbered, and occasionally reorganized; the current text published at the Nevada Legislature’s Court Rules index and the NRS controls over any summary here.