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Standoff over 95-year-old judge shows downside of lifetime jobs
- CraigRo 4y agoI recall talking with a 70 year old physicist who was the last professor forced out by mandatory retirement. He was a great teacher and incredibly bitter about this. I work with a number of 75+ programmers- it is hard to get this right, and, outside of judges who are protected constitutionally, you run into huge labor law problems
- overthrow 4y agoHere's your vocabulary word of the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontocracy A gerontocracy is a form of oligarchical rule in which an entity is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population.
- brailsafe 4y agoSo like, the whole housing market in some areas
- seattle_spring 4y agoSo is the US a gerontocracy? Our last 2 presidents have been fucking ancient, and the ones prior to them haven’t been much younger save for Obama.
- bigmattystyles 4y agoI think Clinton was younger than Obama when he took office.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThe Senate is 79% Boomers or older, too.
- hibikir 4y agoIn the 80s, the Soviet Union was criticized for being a gerontocracy. Brezhnev came to power in his 50s, and died in charge at 75. He was replaced by Andropov, 67. Then came Chernenko, 72. They had worse medicine than we have today, but they would all be spring chickens compared to our recent presidential candidates. The median US senator is 65. Chuck Grassley is 89, and has held his seat since 1981. Diane Feinstein is also 89. And the picture in the Supreme Court isn't much better, even though there are big advantages in nominating young judges, which can hold on to their seats for many decades. So is the US a gerontocracy? It's not much of question.
- sidewndr46 4y agoIf I recall correctly the follow-on to that interesting episode in Soviet history was Gorbachev. Who more or less brought about the end of the Soviet Union.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoTrump, Bush, and Clinton were all born in 1946 (ie pure baby boomers). But Clinton was a much younger president than Bush, who was a much younger president than Trump.
- overthrow 4y agoIn case you didn't click through, the wikipedia article has a whole section about the US.
- outlace 4y agoI mean, we're the ones voting for these people. Also, this is like one judge in the whole country, and apparently from this article the last time this happened was in 1975. I don't think we need to create new regulations for every little rare problem. Things can be dealt with on a case by case basis sometimes.
- carlosjobim 4y agoWho are "we"? Where's the young citizen who had a say on who should be judge? Where's the young citizen who voted for the Federal Reserve chairman or the ECB president?
- filoleg 4y ago> Where's the young citizen who had a say on who should be judge? Presumably voting in house and senate races in November for the candidates whom they trust to vote for the next Federal Reserve chairman on their behalf (in a way that reflects their concerns and wishes).
- andsoitis 4y ago> Where's the young citizen who voted for the Federal Reserve chairman What do you mean? That older people could vote but young voters could not?
- sieabahlpark 4y ago[dead]
- KennyBlanken 4y ago> I mean, we're the ones voting for these people Often we don't have a choice; even if party support wasn't mandatory, there are young, newly elected congressional representatives who are struggling to support their families because congress never once considered that one of them might not be independently wealthy.
- labster 4y agoEasily confused with a gerundtocracy: ruling by the present participle class.
- koolba 4y ago> Shen’s proposed solution: a judicial health-assessment program that would collect cognitive data when a judge is nominated and in follow-ups every five years. The results of that testing would remain private and confidential, according to Shen. I’d love if all elected officials were mandated to disclose all the medications they are taking. At least let us know who in Congress is taking Alzheimer’s medication.
- anonymousiam 4y agoWhy limit it to congress? I suspect there may be a high-level elected official in the executive branch that is also using such medication.
- everforward 4y agoThat creates a perverse incentive to not take medication. I.e. we'd end up where we are now, but with unmedicated people. I do think psychiatric evaluations make sense, especially for judges. They can really mess someone's life up, and theoretically the judgement would be overturned on appeal, but that's little solace to someone that spent 6 months in jail while the appeal happened.
- voakbasda 4y agoOne problem with this strategy is that such evaluations are relatively subjective. Like everything else in government, the process would become stacked with politically motivated individuals that have an agenda, and the judiciary would ultimately be biased according to their whims.
- everforward 4y agoOh definitely. My offhand idea would be to do a sort of jury selection. Pick 20 random psychiatrists from the AMA roster, let each side remove 5, and have the remaining 10 submit evaluations. I think if a majority (so 6) find them incompetent to be a judge, there should be some form of citizens voting on whether to keep them or not. Not state legislators, but actual citizens.
- lando2319 4y agoThe problem with competency tests, they would inevitably get abused by political parties, also would a defendant just be able to demand a competency test just because the judge looks elderly?
- TrueSlacker0 4y agoI internally debate it but I always seem to come back to the thought that if you can collect social security you shouldn't be allowed to hold public office.
- rhelz 4y agoIf we didn't grant lifetime tenure to judges, they would live in perpetual fear of retaliation from ruling against a powerful or well-connected defendant. C.F. also university professors or school teachers who also get similar, tho more limited tenure. Not saying there are no edge cases where the policy can be problematic, but when you are standing in judgement over people, its a lot easier to be impartial and a lot easier to reject bribes when you have that kind of security.
- sidewndr46 4y agoAlso known as "normal job security" to anyone living in the real world.
- kelipso 4y agoJust set it to 20 years or something with no option to renew. There are plenty of government positions that have limit of like 5 years or something.
- giobox 4y agoThis has a simple solution used in other countries - Lifetime appointments with mandatory retirement ages. The UK as one example requires much of the judiciary to retire by 70.
- ihumanable 4y agoWe could just appoint them until a given age, let's say 70 for example, and then guarantee lifetime benefits after that but they no longer serve. It has all the same benefits of a lifetime tenure, they don't need to worry about retaliation, they wouldn't be _more_ likely to accept bribes since they will still have income and benefits for their retirement, etc.
- philsnow 4y ago> all the same benefits of a lifetime tenure Well, unless the person strongly values the contribution to society that being a judge represents. If there's another career they could go into and still practice into their 90s, maybe they'd prefer that.
- cameldrv 4y agoA lot of jobs used to have mandatory retirement at 65. Past 75 or 80 there is a clear decline in cognition for most everyone. There also used to be norms about these sorts of things. People don’t like to follow norms anymore so perhaps we should make a rule.
- yieldcrv 4y agoMany licenses require retesting every couple of years
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoNominated by Ronald Reagan in 1984. We need a higher turnover rate on these jobs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Newman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Newman
- zuminator 4y agoProblem is, even if we agreed in principle to a mandatory retirement age, the party not in power would not want hand over those vacancies to the sitting president. The article points out that over a tenth of Federal judges are over 80. If presumably they're half D, half R, and they would all be forced to retire, then the current administration would get a free pass to replace a large cohort of politically mixed old judges with a homogeneous slate of young D judges. And it would be a one-shot imbalance, because in the future, judges would age out gradually instead of 10% all at once. So it's unlikely R's would agree to it, nor would D's agree when R's are the ones in power. The only way I could see it being politically palatable is if current judges over 80 are allowed to remain, but any judges turning 80 as of a certain future date are made to retire. So, for instance, if the law went into effect today it could declare that any judge born in the year 1950 or later and turning 80 as of Jan 1, 2030 or later would have to retire.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoAren't judges supposed to apply the rule of law regardless of political affiliation? Isn't the law meant to be blind to such things? The fact that it does in fact matter (in some cases a lot!) in practice is a bit a bigger problem than the judges' age.
- darkwizard42 4y agoI think this is more of a simplification than a true political affiliation. Judges have conservative and liberal leaning tendencies in their interpretation of the law -- they are supposed to provide an interpretation of the law and naturally that will land on one end of the political spectrum. Personal bias creeps into many rulings and is especially common at the lowest level courts (where checks are limited and visibility is low). Conservative judges can greatly limit progress on a number of hot button issues that matter to Republicans and similarly, liberal judges can push the interpretation of laws which might not be desired by the other side. Even at the Supreme Court level you can see the conflict play out.
- nerdchum 4y agoHaha so a......grandfather.... clause?
- nisegami 4y agoI'm advocating for fixed-duration appointments then euthanasia.