The Nevada Revised Statutes, usually shortened to NRS, are the official compiled collection of all permanent laws passed by the Nevada Legislature. They cover everything from criminal offenses to business licensing to property rights, organized into titles, chapters, and sections you can search or browse. The Legislative Counsel Bureau updates the code after each legislative session, and the full text is free to read on the Nevada Legislature’s website.1
How the Code Is Organized
The NRS uses three tiers. Titles are the broadest groupings, each covering a major subject area. Title 15 covers crimes and punishments. Title 11 covers domestic relations. Title 14 covers criminal procedure. When the code was first adopted in 1957 it had 58 titles, and the Legislative Counsel can add new ones as needed to keep the structure logical.
Inside each title, chapters narrow the subject. Title 15, for example, contains separate chapters for crimes against the person, property crimes, and fraud. Chapters are divided into sections, which are the smallest working unit of the code. A single section might define an offense, set a penalty, create a deadline, or establish a right. Within a section, numbered or lettered subsections in parentheses break complicated rules into their individual parts.
How to Read an NRS Citation
Every provision has a numerical address, and once you learn the pattern it is easy to decode. The number before the decimal point is the chapter. The number after it is the section within that chapter. NRS 200.010 points to Chapter 200 (Crimes Against the Person), Section 010, which defines murder. NRS 239.010 points to Chapter 239 (Public Records), Section 010, which establishes the right to inspect public records.
You do not need to include the title number in a citation. Chapter numbers run continuously through the whole code, so the chapter alone is enough to find the section. In formal legal writing, the same citation may appear as “Nev. Rev. Stat.” or “N.R.S.” followed by the section number, sometimes with a section symbol (ยง). For everyday use, “NRS” followed by the chapter-and-section number works.
If the law in question has changed over time, writers often add the year in parentheses at the end of the citation to show which version they mean. A citation without a year refers to the current version.
Where to Find the NRS
The simplest way to read the NRS is through the Nevada Legislature’s official website, which hosts the full text in a searchable digital format organized by title and chapter. It is free and works from any device.
Keep one thing in mind: the official version of the NRS is the print edition published by the Legislative Counsel Bureau in loose-leaf binders. The online text is updated regularly and reliable for research, but if a dispute turns on exact wording, the print edition governs.
For older versions of the law or for people who prefer paper, the Nevada State Library, Archives and Public Records keeps NRS volumes for public use. County law libraries across the state also stock the code and often carry annotated editions, which include brief summaries of court decisions interpreting each section. Those annotations are useful when you need to know how a statute has actually been applied, not just what it says.
NRS vs. Statutes of Nevada
These are not the same thing. The Statutes of Nevada are the chronological record of every bill passed during a legislative session, printed in the order the governor signed them. The NRS is the organized, consolidated version of the law as it currently stands. After each session, the Legislative Counsel Bureau integrates new provisions into the existing NRS and removes anything the Legislature repealed, so the code always reflects current law. Because the Nevada Legislature meets in regular session only every two years, in odd-numbered years, the NRS is typically updated on a biennial cycle.
NRS vs. Nevada Administrative Code
The NRS sets broad policy. The detailed rules that state agencies write to carry out that policy live in a separate publication, the Nevada Administrative Code (NAC). The relationship is hierarchical: an agency can only adopt a regulation if a statute in the NRS gives it authority to do so, and every NAC regulation must cite the NRS section that authorizes it.
In practice, the NRS might require a certain business to be licensed, while the NAC spells out the application forms, fees, and inspection schedules. If an NAC regulation conflicts with its parent NRS statute, the statute wins. When you are researching a legal question, checking both the relevant NRS chapter and the matching NAC chapter gives you the full picture.
Looking Up What Lawmakers Intended
Sometimes the text of a statute does not clearly answer a question, and you need to know what the Legislature was trying to do when it wrote or changed the law. In Nevada, the most useful source of legislative intent is committee minutes, which record testimony and discussion before a bill is voted out of committee. Floor statements and bill summaries prepared by Legislative Counsel Bureau staff also help.
The LCB Research Library maintains a searchable database of compiled legislative histories. Each compiled history gathers the key documents for a bill in one place: the original text, amendments, committee minutes, floor statements, and the governor’s message. The most efficient way to start is to identify the bill number that created or amended the NRS section you care about, then pull the history for that bill. The Nevada Legislature’s website and the Nevada Supreme Court Law Library both offer tools and guides for this work.