# State v. Jones

> New Mexico Supreme Court · September 23, 1940 · 44 N.M. 623

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3571031

## Case

- **Full name:** STATE v. JONES Et Al.
- **Court:** New Mexico Supreme Court
- **Decided:** September 23, 1940
- **Citations:** 44 N.M. 623; 107 P.2d 324
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Zinn
- **Judges:** Sadler, Bickley, Zinn, Brice, Mabry
- **Cited by:** 48 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3571031

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- recognizing that an attempt to separate cause from effect, being the consideration paid through a patron’s registration from the offer of prizes by chance, is an obvious subterfuge to avoid being recognized as a lottery
- stating that the object of stare decisis is to promote “uniformity, certainty, and stability in the law”

## Opinion text

ZINN, Justice
(concurring in result).
I agree with the opinion of our able CHIEF JUSTICE, except that part of his opinion wherein he approves of the action of the majority in making their overruling pronouncement prospective in operation rather than restrospective.
To approve their action is to sanction a usurpation by the judiciary of a legislative function. We would not permit the Legislature to encroach upon the domain assigned exclusively to us by the Constitution of our State. By what right, other than by a judicial sense of superiority, do we presume to say this shall hereafter be the law which heretofore was not the law. To announce a rule of substantive law for the future is solely the function of the Legislature. If what the majority say is the law, then it has been the law ever since the Legislature passed the lottery law.
I concur in the result.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3571031. Public record. Not legal advice.