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.
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.
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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.
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I will say this one last time. Equating the necessity for certain jobs to require physical fitness with the requirement for other jobs to have mental fitness makes no sense. This does not mean we shouldn’t remove people from their jobs because they are old, but because they are unfit. When there is a strong correlation between fitness and age, such as physical well-being, and a failure to perform your job puts lives on the line, age limits make sense. When there is a much weaker correlation between age and fitness, such as mental acuity, other tools will achieve better results.
All of this is tangential to setting a retirement age. If you as a nation are going to require people to stop working at a specific age, then you as a nation should be willing to guarantee the financial well-being of people over a certain age. If you don’t want to support them, then you shouldn’t mandate they stop being able to support themselves. Currently, about a quarter of the American workforce is over 65. I guarantee a significant number of them aren’t doing it out of preference rather than necessity.
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I don’t think it will be the judge, or those with enough power to cause harm to society to the planet or society who would suffer under your grand plans. More like the old lady working at Wal-Mart who would love to be able to retire and still be able to afford food and shelter. This is why sweeping generalizations while focusing on only a tiny part of the outcome both lead to bad policies and makes you look like a ghoul.I missed the context of government officials. I still think a simple age requirement is a poor choice, but certainly better than no retirement options at all within that context.
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