Court Opinion

ID: 9793896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:54:59.601701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:44.546542
License: Public Domain

HARTZ, Judge (concurring in part, dissenting in part). I agree that our Supreme Court would overrule Cartwright I, and I join in Judge Apodaca’s opinion except for two reservations. First, I do not have quite as much confidence as the rest of the panel that historians will be unable to uncover any further historical support for the pueblo rights doctrine. Nevertheless, the mere possibility of a future flip-flop by historians cannot justify retention of a doctrine that runs so counter to public policy rooted in the New Mexico Constitution and statutes. Second, I disagree that rejection of the pueblo rights doctrine in this appeal necessarily disposes of all the claims under that doctrine by the City of Las Vegas. After all, Las Vegas is the one community in the state to have the benefit of a Supreme Court pronouncement that it possesses a pueblo right, however ill-defined that right may have been. I would leave to the district court on remand the issue of whether the City still possesses any rights arising from the Supreme Court decision in Cartwright I.