Sunday, August 17, 2014

Age and the Judiciary

Susan, a JP, has emailed to ask me to comment on the fact that JPs have to retire at 70, which would now be illegal in everyday employment.

The entire judiciary, right up to the Lord Chief Justice has to go at 70, (with a very few exceptions) and I have no problem with that. We can't have old codgers like me, in my 60s, clogging up the bench and getting in the way of young fresh people. The late Lord Denning sat on to a very advanced age, but that will not happen in future.

14 comments:

  1. What is so special about 'fresh young people' - throughout history they are troublemakers. Better keep old curmidgeons.

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  2. 'Fresh young people', of whatever race or creed, just aren't interested in serving their communities until they reach a certain age - they're far too busy trying to make their way in life, and are not going to hamper their careers by taking days off to do voluntary work. How many youngsters do you see sitting on parish or district councils, which like the magistracy are unpaid positions?

    Susan's point presumably is that it's wrong for good people at 70 - who are the previous generation's 60 year-olds - to have to stand down with their immense knowledge and experience, but magistrates have no employment rights as do the 70+ still in work. But you can now sit on a jury until you're 75, so where's the logic in that?

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  3. There has to be a cut off so 70 is not a bad one. The other alternative, possibly is fixed terms.

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  4. It is 'fat' isn't it ? All that money for so little - living off the fat of the land.

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    Replies
    1. 1) Typo corrected
      2) What money is that? I get £7.45 or so for lunch, and my petrol to drive to court.

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    2. Robert the Biker19 August 2014 at 10:26

      Luxury!
      When I were a lad we made do wi' cup o gravel an' mug o' ditch water!
      :)

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  5. Age and the prisoner - Bystander team might be interested in this story. It is very difficult to understand how this man ended up with a custodial sentence: http://www.wandsworthguardian.co.uk/news/11413922.Pensioner_spills_the_beans_about_life_behind_bars_in_High_Down_prison/?ref=eb

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  6. I am a magistrate. Retirement at 70 seems perfectly reasonable to me. What is not so reasonable is the utterly absurd idea floating round Whitehall that we should retire after ten years of service, regardless of age. Funny isn't it that no such suggestion has been made for DJ's or any court judges.

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    1. Anon writes:"What is not so reasonable is the utterly absurd idea floating round Whitehall that we should retire after ten years of service, regardless of age."

      I think that you will find that one has been quietly forgotten with the abrupt departure of Damian Green from his Police Minister post in the July cabinet reshuffle.

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    2. I hope you are right Jaguar but I would prefer to know for sure that it has been realised how absurd and probably costly it would be and dropped, rather than just being forgotten and hence very easy to resurrect. Damian Green may have gone but we don't know if the clown who dreamed this one up has also gone. Only time will tell.

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  7. Family magistrates are now officially designated as "judges of the family court" and since the legislation on the statutory age of judicial retirement explicitly excludes those judges appointed before 31 March 1995 from the requirement to retire at 70 (any judge who first assumed judicial office before that date can remain in post until the age of 75, as a number of long-serving judges have done, and a diminishing number will continue to do), one could certainly make a good case for saying that it would be discriminatory to treat magistrates appointed before that date differently from other judicial office holders. What I would not recommend is doing as the Mayor of Fylde's wife is reported to have done on her last sitting (as reported across the national media and on Councillor Henshaw's website) and singing a revamped version of the Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's Forty song. It didn't fit terribly well with the dignity of the court.

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  8. Denning was definitely past his sell-by date by the time he finally retired, as his later judgments all too clearly showed. It may well have been his 'example' that led to the move for a compulsory retirement age for judges.

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  9. So are we recruiting again ?

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    Replies
    1. To a limited extent. Some benches are interviewing, but the drop off in business means that the bench still needs to shrink a bit more.

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