The judge said Chief Judge Markey gave her permission to disregard a court rule. That judge "has been dead for 17 years and has not been a member of the Court for 32 years," noted the council.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Part of it is because you still need a gig to keep the retirement funds rolling. You don't want to live it out on pea soup and bread.
Part of it is because after a certain point every bit of your body, from your bones to your brains, is only available on a Use It or Lose It basis with no warranty for service blackouts.
And part of it is because, and l guess this is due to the collapse of the extended-family model, lots of people don't have anyone or thing to go home to; they're divorced or widowed, kids have moved out, and their social network has literally died out.
Towards the end of his life my father only had ONE surviving peer from grade school. Imagine how it is to call your only surviving friend on a regular basis and to wonder, each time, if today's the day you learn you've already heard their voice for the last time.
Yup. A lot of people here don’t get that when you retire the funds are finite. And you could still live another 20 yrs, even up to 35 more years but completely alone and with no income. If you have someone telling you to quit as you round up to 65 when you have another good 20 yrs of cognizance to pull income, you won’t go quietly.
And you shouldn’t.
Retirement right now is still expecting you’re going to pay your way or live worse than prison conditions. Even worse if you’re a person with disabilities or early onset issues, diabetes along with other things from a lifestyle habit of consumerism pushed on all of us by capitalists that don’t give a shit what happens to you down the line.
it’s not to say someone shouldn’t retire eventually when they can no longer work. It’s to say that assuming you’re as incompetent at 60 as if you’re 96 is just plain refusal to recognize the human condition and it’s ageism. The article is about a 96 yr old. That’s past 30 yrs retirement age. It’s only in her recent years this is happening so the fact she made it to 90 cognizant is actually very impressive either way. So just saying yeah, she should retire now. But blaming her for not retiring at 65 when she’s 30+ past that age is a misnomer argument at this stage. If anything we should all be so lucky to make it past 70 with our cognitive abilities with the current American diet slowly killing our organ function.
Why do they not want to ? Ego and or indoctrination mainly. (Work itself has worth for being work, power over others, you're an attention whore and fear obscurity, or some combination ). There's also a stigma with being retired.
I retired at 35 and am now 58. My only regret was not stopping earlier.
Imagine you go to court and this fossil at 96 is the one who determines your fate. Imagine if you catch her on an off day and she thinks you stole her computer, her files or other nonsense she's accused court staff of doing (the only thing that's been stolen is her marbles, and it looks like they went a few years back)
Get these shocking people out of the courts and into the nursing home where they belong
Should just make the retirement age for these people 65. Everyone. Senators. Presidents. Want to get a job in an advisory role after that? Cool, at least then we have a filter for the madness and your dementia can't fuck anyone over directly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm all for term limits and an end to lifetime appointments, but maybe it's time we start pulling back on the idea that people are useless and incompetent the moment they turn 65. I don't really think putting an expiration date on human beings is a good thing.
It has nothing to do with the article, just the general vibe of every comment section talking about old people turns into a circle jerk about when people are no longer valuable to society.
I don't know that anybody is realistically saying that, I'm sure some assholes do and I often group all the "olds" together when I am frustrated. There are many things at play here:
government appointments for life (or until retirement) mean that powerful government positions are basically unavailable for younger generations
American work ethic tells you it is good to work until you die and not "freeload"
Some people that get power like it and will not willingly relinquish it
we have not aptitude tests for really anything beyond what it takes to get hired
I don't know what the right and fair solution is, but it feels like government appointments should have a time limit. What that is I don't know what is reasonable
Some people die young, some people die old. Some people get Alzheimer's in their 30s or 40s, others remain sharp up till death at 95. I could see a specific age as a guideline but to say "you're 70, off you go to pasture" is just as wrong as keeping on someone clearly incompetent.