Court Opinion

ID: 9789437
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:36:22.334058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:22.447177
License: Public Domain

WALTERS, Justice (dissenting). I respectfully dissent. Whereas it might have been prudent for the framers to have required three years’ residency immediately preceding the time a judge takes office in New Mexico, the very fact that language proposing that requirement was deleted from the final form submitted by the framers of New Mexico’s constitution speaks more forcefully and eloquently for the intent of the Constitutional Convention not to require immediately preceding residency than any tortuous reasoning to the contrary. Secondly, I suggest that it is more reasonable to believe that at the time the constitution was drafted that the framers recognized the not unusual practice of appointing non-residents of the Territory of New Mexico to territorial judgeships, and considered such prior judicial experience of three years satisfactory in fulfilling both the practice and residency requirements of art. VI, section 8. The Majority Report could certainly be so read when all of its disjunctive clauses are analyzed, especially in light of the final “unless” clause proposed by the Committee on Judicial Department as cited in the majority opinion — if the Report should be considered to have had any influence on the section as ultimately adopted. I am not a great advocate of writing into constitutions that which has been clearly and, quite pointedly, left out. I therefore dissent from the majority opinion, and would affirm the trial court.