The Judges 8 Copyright 1999 by I. Nelson Rose. All rights reserved worldwide. The Judges Legislatures and voters may make the laws. But judges have to decide what those laws mean in actual, real-world controversies.
Technological advances make their job even more difficult.
The Oregon State Lottery may use video lottery games. The South Dakota State Lottery may not use video lottery games. The Supreme Court of Oregon decided that video poker machines did not violate the state constitutional prohibition on casinos, because the lottery initiative included electronic devices. The South Dakota Supreme Court looked at the passive, paper lottery games that were being played by state lotteries at the time and decided voters did not intend that games would be played on machines. Sometimes the problem is that the law is so old that no one alive today knows exactly what it means.