PHOENIX - Unlike judges at the local level, federal judges don't have a mandatory retirement age, meaning people well into their 80s are still sitting on the bench.
"By the time you get that old, you're out of touch," said Andrew Hessick, associate professor of law at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor Collge of Law. "They just can't keep up quite as much."
Under the rules in the U.S. Constitution, there is no maximum age, only that judges "shall hold their offices during good behavior."
Some say this isn't good for the American justice system, even calling for a constitutional amendment.
In an article in
The University of Chicago Law Review entitled "Mental Decrepitude on the U.S. Supreme Court," historian David Garrow wrote, "History teaches us that a constitutional amendment mandating compulsory retirement at age seventy-five will strengthen the Supreme Court of the twenty-first century and save it from predictable pain and embarrassment."
"The history of the Court is replete with repeated instances of justices casting decisive votes or otherwise participating actively in the Court's work when their colleagues and/or families had serious doubts about their mental capacities," Garrow wrote.
To date, there are no known reports or accusations of judicial misconduct related to aging issues involving federal judges in the U.S. District of Arizona.
The average age of Arizona's 18 federal judges is 65.
Four of the judges are over the age of 70.
Judge Earl Carroll (age 84), Judge Paul Rosenblatt (age 81), Judge Robert Broomfield (age 76), and Judge Roger Strand (age 75), along with Judge Stephen McNamee (age 67), have "senior judge" status.
According to the court clerk's office, all of the senior judges are still hearing cases except for Strand.
"They can't be removed, but some courts may be able to reduce their case load," Hessick said.
"There's no way that mental decrepitude in an aging judge could be as severe a problem on a lower federal court as it could be on the U.S. Supreme Court," Garrow said. "Federal district judges have much less room for personal choice because they are so extremely subject to review and reversal by the courts of appeal."
Judge John Roll, chief judge for the U.S. District of Arizona, had no comment on calls for judicial reform or on a mandatory retirement age.
State, county, and city judges face a mandatory retirement age of 70 under Article 6 of the Arizona Constitution.
