WHO will guard the guardians? When Juvenal, the Roman poet, asked this question twenty centuries ago, he was worried about cheating wives. Today, the query is being posed to the elderly judges of America’s highest court. David Garrow, a law and history professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, reminds us in an op-ed at the Los Angeles Times that the Supreme Court has never been older. The baby on the bench is Justice Elena Kagan at 55, now serving her sixth Supreme Court term. Her fellow Barack Obama appointee, Sonia Sotomayor, is 61—as is the chief justice, John Roberts. Conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are 65 and 67. From there the bench turns decidedly geriatric. Stephen Breyer is now 77 and Anthony Kennedy is 79. The ideologically incompatible opera-loving buddies Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are the oldest justices. Both are celebrating birthdays next month; he is turning 80, she 83.
The constitution says that federal judges hold their...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1QILypO
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