Judge Newman has threatened to have staff arrested, forcibly removed from the building, and fired. She accused staff of trickery, deceit, acting as her adversary, stealing her computer, stealing her files, and depriving her of secretarial support. Staff have described Judge Newman in their interactions with her as “aggressive, angry, combative, and intimidating”; “bizarre and unnecessarily hostile”; making “personal accusations”; “agitated, belligerent, and demonstratively angry”; and “ranting, rambling, and paranoid.” Indeed, interactions with Judge Newman have become so dysfunctional that the Clerk of the Court has advised staff to avoid interacting with her in person or, when they must, to bring a co-worker with them.
This didn’t happen overnight, if it’s this bad now then her judgement has been compromised for a long time.
We need term limits, because once these (completely normal) mental changes start happening, the person will almost always react with aggression and refuse to ever step down.
We have a thing called senior citizenry.
It’s an age at which we decided old folks can start skimming funds off the top to make ends meet, because they are otherwise unable
It is absolutely unconscionable to be collecting social security while simultaneously holding office.
No one over the age of 65 should be allowed to hold any office. Ever.
I don’t think age needs to be the limiting factor. I’ve met plenty of 70+ year olds who are mentally capable of performing any job. My grandfather is in his 80’s and he’s a kick ass doctor.
I strongly feel that it needs to be test and check up based. Something impartial treated with an air of dignity so that people are raised respecting that it’s perfectly alright to not pass it. That should help avoid stigma while ensuring people like that judge are a non-issue if not nearly a non-issue.
But there is a HUGE difference between living a healthy, active, and fulfilling life and holding a public office deciding extremely sensitive and important things that will decide the outcome of someone’s life or the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
What if 50% of people above a certain age have a mental of physical disability(example), then would an age limit be justified? There are probably more 25-30 year olds than 70-80 year olds that are mentally and intellectually sound enough to hold office.
I’m fully in favor of having better representation in our elected offices but limiting it based solely on age feels bad a like solution when the problem is based on problems that may happen with age.
For example, let’s say you were a berry eater who loves wild berries. You go out and eat a berry and notices that later on it gave you indigestion, after several more times that berry has consistently done it but other berries do not, would you stop eating wild berries or identify the one giving you indigestion and stop eating those?
It’s a silly example, but it works. If someone is capable of performing the position without issues they should be able to. That’s why I’m advocating for a solution that’s based on identifying those solutions after they appear so that anyone who is capable and has the desire can work as they like.
For those capable people, a fulfilling life can be defined as working the position. Why stop them from it?
I understand what you are saying.
However, why shouldn’t there be a lower age limit on elected office? Plenty of capable people for it. If they are capable of performing the position without issues they should be able to.
It has to go both ways because the exact same arguments can be made for each end of the age spectrum.
Because they need to get out of the way for the next generation.
Your examples work well in La La land but in reality those tests and checkups would be riddled with fraud and favouritism.
There isn’t an age limit to youth running in office. Go on, take some responsibility then.
Tests would be a pretty bad idea. It is easy to imagine the ways that someone could use that to attack their political opponents. Similar things were used to disenfranchise voters in the past. Also, it is too easy to corrupt the legitimacy of such a test. All a person would need to do is get a heads up of how the test works and practice for it. Or, have the test designed to be too easy to pass. It’s easy to say “make it impartial, scientific, and dignified”, but that doesn’t mean it will be. I seriously doubt any governmental body ever has or will be that trustworthy. An actual age limit would be objective and clear though, making it much more practical.
How would an opponent be able to attack you if the test is pass or fail? You either are able to have an opponent or you can’t run.
Using a strict age limit would only result in a segment of people who are paying taxes without having representation which is the exact situation we’re brainstorming ideas to avoid.
Instead, the group in question has had almost exclusive representation for half a century. There are lower age limits, so there should be upper limits.
I don’t want an 80 year old as a doctor. My luck he’d be hit with Mega Alzheimer’s right in the operating room and rearrange my insides to look like a Christmas tree because he thought he was 25 again and decorating one with his first born son again.
Given I just stated my grandfather is a doctor and is not suffering from Alzheimer’s I can’t help but feel insulted by your comment.
I can understand being concerned by the Elderly however given that age does not ensure someone will develop Alzheimer’s, I find your comment rude and offensive. I hope you’ll consider using some tact in expressing your concerns in the future.
Lemme reword it a bit to be more respectful:
I do not think anyone age 80 should have to work for a living. He should be chilling in an RV or something fishing or whatever he likes doing. Savvy?
whatever he likes doing
What if he really likes being a doctor?
Maybe he should teach.
I think they raise a perfectly reasonable point, despite your feelings.
While it may not seem likely to occurr, I would also not allow an 80 year old doctor to care for me for very similar reasons.
Also because they learned medicine in the 60s. Would you trust your life to something built in the 60s if you had a choice?
Doctors don’t just stop learning medicine when they leave school though.
It should be easier to whistle blow if someone thinks a worker is losing capacity to do their job, but having an arbitrary age at which you’re no longer allowed to work in office doesn’t serve its purpose. Some people can have dementia starting in their 50s, and other people in their 70s are excellent in higher level positions due to how much experience they’ve amassed.
If anything, there should just be better peer performance reviews across the board.
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But we set a limit because there needs to be one.
That’s why. There are certain things that are significant enough that we don’t let just anyone do them, yet also important enough to self-determination that we don’t usually say a person will never be allowed to make that choice. That age when we’ve decided people are mentally, not physically, mature enough to make those decisions is 18. Most people have reached that threshold, some have been there for years, some never will be. Some will barely skim past that threshold, and we will hear stories about them for years. Those who are incapable of breaching that threshold have some or all of their rights as adults removed, and we call that guardianship, power of attorney, and similar things.
The difference between minors and incapable seniors is that some never become that much less capable, and those that do will do so over a truly significant span of years, like half a lifetime’s difference. So how do you pick a number and say, “This is when adults are too old to make good decisions,” without disregarding the capabilities of the vast majority of the people affected on the low side of the range or being far too late to matter on the high side? Perhaps dealing with something with such a great degree of variability should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
There is a mandatory retirement age for airline transport pilots. 65 years of age. There are also mandatory medical examinations for ALL commercial pilots.
Now, the general public has a uniquely great interest in an airline pilot’s cardiovascular health, aka “is the geezer in the cockpit going to have a heart attack between here and Newark?”
In a job like a judge or other government official whose job is largely paperwork, no heavy equipment is operated, I can see perhaps extending it to 70 years old or something, possibly with a part-time stipulation and possibly on condition of passing some cognition test, something.
But yes something has to be done about the age epidemic in our government offices, our country should not be run primarily by the People Who Should Be Dead By Now If God Had Any Mercy demographic.
I’m not sure why you’re so fixated on physical well-being for a job that has no negative consequences for poor physical health, and we have numerous examples of judges performing their jobs so poorly that an appeal is pretty much a slam dunk, regardless of age. Yet even when you acknowledge the merits of tests for mental competence in a field that literally references having sound judgement in its name, you still have to circle back to the age issue. There are better metrics than that, even ignoring the fact that we have good evidence that there are pretty shitty people in positions of power from just about every age demographic that can get elected or appointed.
I’m “so fixated on physical well-being” because there are folks in this discussion saying that no one should be working at all over 65. Let me reiterate my points, low attention span listicle style:
- There is an industry with a mandatory retirement age. Airline pilot. 65 years old.
- This limit is largely in place for cardiovascular health reasons aka we don’t like pilots having heart attacks and less about cognition.
- Many retired airline pilots continue to fly smaller planes, often offering flight instruction, demonstrating mental wellness beyond the age of 65.
- Since many governmental roles such as judge etc. aren’t as immediately safety critical as airline pilot, much of the reason for an age limit can be relaxed, but I still feel that senility (or just plain being out of touch) is a significant factor in such cases.
So there needs to be some practical limit to the age of government officials.
So we shouldn’t give social security to people unless they have dementia?
We already have an arbitrary age set. We should stick to it.
I’m still game for removing someone earlier than that if they are unfit. But after 65? You’re not fit. Even if you “are.” You’re too far removed from the policies you’d be enacting. It’s just nonsense.
I think that’s a disservice to people who have intimate knowledge of how a service has developed over time, and common problems with change that younger people may not have experienced.
I’m not saying that people should all be forced or unduly enabled to carry on working well into their seniority, but we’d be missing the opportunity to utilise skills and experience by enforcing a hard limit - certainly as young as 65!
The problem is that you’d need an objective, unbiased, incorruptible review process. I have zero faith that any government is capable of providing such a thing, particularly in a situation like this, where there’s so much room for interpretation.
Selecting an arbitrary age has its own problems, but at least it’s much simpler and harder to argue with.
Anyone who’s dealt with someone with early dementia will recognize this behavior. I can empathize with those suffering from it, because my own mind slipping away would be incredibly frustrating. But if you’re a danger to yourself and others someone needs to stop you, whether its to keep you from driving or to keep you from presiding over trials.
We need a mandatory retirement age for federal appointees, fucking immediately.
I work in higher education, coordinating advanced degree programs. This situation makes me think of half a dozen research faculty I know personally that behave the exact same way.
I’m not of the opinion that people of advanced age are automatically less competent, but it’s a fact that age-related cognitive decline is a thing. People persisting in important decision-making positions after such decline cause immense and compounding problems.
It’ll never happen, but I’d love for us to collectively decide that a particular age range is the end of a person’s professional life and the beginning of something new and exciting and also dignified. I’m aware of the cultural reasons that it can’t happen in this particular time and place, but it would improve things a lot if it could.
there used to be tenure with sanity; it was rare for faculty to stay on after their abilities started to wane. Then came the boomers.
Why do these old people constantly feel the need to work? I’m trying to retire the moment I can and enjoy the rest of my life.
You ever heard the phrase “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”?
Well some people love being abusive pieces of shit.
Probably not as much as I love this comment though.
Then create a culture that isn’t reliant on working to make money just for basic necessities.
It should be possible considering we have some money hoarders hoarding enough that we shouldn’t have people going hungry and enough houses that people shouldn’t be homeless.
Yet we do.
Tax the rich.
Geez. Just step down and run for Congress or the Executive at this point.
Presidential material right there
Or maybe just step down 😂 we don’t need folks older than boomers running the government!
Is the occupation of judge so badly compensated, that you can’t retire? What the fuck is wrong with this lady?
I assume she’s got nothing else in her life, actually quite sad
She’s in severe mental decline? I thought the article made that pretty clear.
What’s wrong with the system?
I’m sure there are financial benefits being a federal judge
Let’s ask … Clarence Thomas, shall we?
I think for her it’s the ego trip not the money. Same thing Bader-Ginsburg did which gave us Kavanagh.
There needs to be an age limit for these positions. Sounds like she should have retired 25 years ago.
Technology is allowing us to live “longer,” but not necessarily “better.”
We shouldn’t be ruled by geriatrics. Age limits need to be a thing.
Age limits could be tricky and unnecessarily easy to use in a divisive political campaign though. But contract term limits should be introduced into lots of positions. It not only gives the employers an easy and expected out, but it also gives a natural contract renegotiation point for workers with smaller bargaining power.
Sounds like dementia. My father in law has dementia and all of a sudden started accusing me of stealing his $5 sunglasses and being super aggressive at my mother in laws birthday party. Shit sucks when it progresses to this stage and someone in charge of people’s lives should definitely call it a day.
People don’t realize that Judge Judy isn’t even a caricature. It is shockingly easy to just up and up become a judge.
I hope she doesn’t drive a vehicle to work.
Term limits
Quick solution for situations like this: compulsive retirement.
65 years old? Get out of here or get thrown out.
Disagree-ish.
I would suggest that, instead, after a certain age or catastrophic loss (such as that of a lifetime partner) we should all be receiving regular competency / cognizants evaluations. I think that compulsive retirement would be dehumanizing, a potential trigger for senility, dementia, or suicide, and a negligent misappropriation of the experience and institutional knowledge, that many of our seniors hold.
Most modern countries contemplate the notion that at some point in your life you are deemed unfit of occupying an active position, regardless whatever experience an individual may have in whatever field.
What that does not imply is the individual being rendered useless. Highly experienced individuals can act as teachers, mentors and advisers, sharing experience but with no weight for actual decision making or action taking.
I myself don’t intend to reach retirement age and turn off all switches and just stay home and vegetate; I think I can make myself useful up until my body becomes too frail and my mind breaks. But there is a point where I don’t want to have any responsabilities towards an institution.
65 isn’t the same as 96
1 is not the same as 2
Care to elaborate on that, please? I’m not following your reasoning.
if you applied this unilaterally you’ll end up with a lot of homeless old people
Surely we can find a sensible middle ground between allowing senile elderly folks to hold positions of power and kicking every 65 year old out of every job lmao.
I mean yeah you’d think so but also I was just responding to the top comment
I’m pretty sure they were referring to judges specifically.
What about homeless former judges?
Have you considered them?
Why?
In my very backwards and barbaric country every person, regardless of their profession, receives a state paid pension and we have a notion of social safety net. There are homeless here, like everywhere else in the world, but elderly citizens can retire knowing they will be taken care of.
On the particular case of judges, and on this I have the luck to have been explained how things work, upon reaching 65, a judge is retired and recognized by their service, with a very generous pension, as the career is considered as being of high strain.
No one should be forced nor allowed to work until their dying breath and this is a prime example for it.
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The US are a shithole that stays afloat because the population is kept tame via populist discourse and seeded in-fighting.
And after reading your comment, I find myself wondering how so many people, from my country included, go to the UK to work. Sounds a bit like US but a notch down.
We all make our choices but you could have chosen other countries, with better social networks.
I have been making contributions towards my national pension fund since I started working and enjoy a free access NHS. When I eventually reach the age of retirement, which now is around 67 years of age, I’ll be granted a pension based on my contributive career.
I’ll still be able to keep working if I choose to but most people don’t and others are barred from it, like judges, surgeons, police officers and even politians, as they are seen unfit to hold crucial positions.
And this applies to all emigrants that move here, with some added conditions, obviously, but still are eligible for these social benefits.
And regardless all of this, you can and should save (products with special tax exemptions exist for that exact purpose) if you expect to maintain a specific standard of living.
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I don’t get the outrage.
This is law. It takes ten years of practice just to really scratch the surface in one small area of law. Arbitrary compulsive retirements (such freedom) serve only to cause brain and experience drain that cannot be easily made up.
Add to that, most people retire when they should all on their own. Maybe sometimes they need a little push from colleagues. Very rarely does it rise to the level of publis inquest and a forced competency exam.
This time it seems it did, and look! It’s happening. What’s the real problem? Why is throwing the baby out with the bath water seen as a legit solution?
I prefer government officials, and especially judges and senators, to have real experience. Most elders are not senile old coots, especially not those who spent their lifetime in a career that by nature is as daily taxing on memory and recall as is the law. Some say the law is a study and a practice in memory. The best trial lawyers usually have the best memory. Add to that the extensive amount of reading and writing trial attorneys and judges do. It’s not like this judge has been clocking out from a show-up job every day at 5 pm and then doom scrolling or binging Netflix.
I would say of the judges I’ve been before including some elderly federal judges in a senior or retired judge, or magistrate sort of role, have been some of the most knowledgeable, most efficient judges I’ve argued to, especially at the appellate level, where all they do (in theory) is jurisprudence, logical and policy reasoning, and interpretation, the most mentally demanding sort of law practice.
She’s 96 and has paranoid persecutory delusions. Supporting her role as a judge is a bizarre take on your part
How is he supporting her role as judge?
Did you not read his comment?
He literally says:
Very rarely does it rise to the level of publis inquest and a forced competency exam.
This time it seems it did, and look! It’s happening. What’s the real problem? Why is throwing the baby out with the bath water seen as a legit solution?
He states that it went wrong this time and that the system in place is correcting the problem. How is that in support of the judge?
The rest of his comment is in support of no age limit for judges. He states in no uncertain terms that the older the judge, the better. His thinking is the cause for a slew of arguably poor decisions made from out of touch geriatric people who overwhelmingly rule over this country.
I’m in support of age limits for people who can directly and insurmountably affect my life. He is not. Therein lies the rub.
I’m not sure if you’re being purposely obtuse, nowhere did he say “the older the judge, they better”.
I prefer government officials, and especially judges and senators, to have real experience. Most elders are not senile old coots, especially not those who spent their lifetime in a career that by nature is as daily taxing on memory and recall as is the law.
I would say of the judges I’ve been before including some elderly federal judges in a senior or retired judge…
Using context clues, I think it’s fair to say I’m not the one being obtuse with my interpretation of OPs comment. Also, there’s a typo in your quote of me.
I don’t necessarily fully agree but I saw you were getting downvotes. Have an upvote.
Well reasoned contribution, thank you
Where are these Obama Death Panels and FEMA Camps?!
