The Washington Post article gives the further context that the court panel is pioneering on their authority to sanction colleagues for misconduct, because that doesn't allow you to remove the judge, just punish them, and this is pretty close to removal which constitutionally can only be done by impeachment.
I don't like how the files are supposed to be on the network drive either. I want to backup to a network, but work from C:.
I feel a futile gesture coming on.
Ha: I was skimming through the PDF's attachments with documents and in the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination*, asked the name of the previous president she responded "The Infamous Trump," vice president "The Infamous Pence", and for governor of your state, "We do not have a governor in DC - how about Florida? That's DeSantis."
*She got this and another screen done herself, but the panel found this inadequate as not designed for early-stage dementia, and derided it as testing "such things as whether Judge Newman can point to her chin, knows the year, and can name a few four-legged animals."
She also couldn't write at the time due to a broken wrist, so someone else was writing from her dictation; all punctuation therefore speculative. It threw me that the name at the top was "Newbergerman" until I remembered that.
Her doctor who administered the one that includes drawing a clock admitted on further examination she had not in fact drawn it, but he had given her points anyway. I couldn't find that completed test in the exhibits.
When my dad failed the Mini-Mental, he still got the president right. His answer was "I think it's a mistake, but they elected this Trump." The nurse didn't seem interested in the editorial but I was glad that I never lost my dad to Fox News before I lost my dad.
She probably dropped The Infamous Dali.
Also, 1/3 of Americans can't name their governor, so the 3MS has problems for more than DC residents.
"she was very quick on the technology uptake when in her 80's"
As hardware gets older it takes longer and longer to install system updates.
Once again I can't help wondering how this works in other countries. Do they have the same problem, modulo average age? Are their institutions stronger/better designed so they can deal with this sort of thing before it gets this bad? Or are lifetime appointments another one of those anachronisms that's unusually common in America because our institutions are so hard to update?
States, with more routinely-amended constitutions, seem to have universally addressed this.
California Constitution, Art. VI Sec. 8(b):
The Commission on Judicial Performance may (1) retire a judge for disability that seriously interferes with the performance of the judge's duties and is or is likely to become permanent, or (2) censure a judge or former judge or remove a judge for action occurring not more than 6 years prior to the commencement of the judge's current term or of the former judge's last term that constitutes willful misconduct in office, persistent failure or inability to perform the judge's duties, habitual intemperance in the use of intoxicants or drugs, or conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute, or (3) publicly or privately admonish a judge or former judge found to have engaged in an improper action or dereliction of duty.
CJP website:
"The commission was established by voter approval of a legislative constitutional amendment in the November 1960 election. The provisions establishing the commission were part of a package of judicial administration reforms, heralded as "real protection against incompetency, misconduct or non-performance of duty on the Bench." ...California was the first state to set up a permanent body to address judicial misconduct. Today there are comparable bodies in all fifty states and in the District of Columbia, many of which were initially modeled after "the California Plan."
Or are lifetime appointments another one of those anachronisms that's unusually common in America because our institutions are so hard to update?
I think this is it.
It would be chaotic at first, but I think the US would be better off if we could pass constitutional amendments with 50%+1 of the popular vote like most states can. We'd have to think carefully about how something gets to the ballot in the first place, of course.
(Though there's a great new idea coming up next year in California that if you want to amend the constitution to require a supermajority approve something, at any level, then you have to get the same supermajority approval for your amendment.)
10: the law says that judges have to retire at 75. That's how we work it. (70 until a couple of years ago.)
(Though there's a great new idea coming up next year in California that if you want to amend the constitution to require a supermajority approve something, at any level, then you have to get the same supermajority approval for your amendment.)
This would be a great idea if all existing supermajorities need to be put up for reapproval by that standard.
Yeah, I mean good on the founders for writing a constitution that managed to survive for so long, but they were making things up as they went along without much to go on, and a lot of it is just terribly designed, and that's compounded by the way amendments work also being terribly designed.
Anyway 50% is too low a bar for giant decisions, that's how you end up with stupid things like Brexit. But the current threshold is too high. 60% is pretty reasonable for amendments.
In 100 years, if the US is still going strong and not fully fallen apart, I think it will have used one of the following:
1. Abstruse workarounds to fix federal governance without amendments (75%)
2. The organic option passing amendments by popular vote, which amendments themselves include reforms to Article V (24.9%)
3. An effectively reforming constitutional convention (0.1%)
I just wrote my Representative suggesting she move to impeach Newman, as pressure for a clean resignation, and to prevent it from becoming a big legal mess.
Sorry, can't agree with Heebie on this one.
13.2 is, indeed, a great idea.
In general supermajorities were always a mistake. Even in less divided times it resulted in too much stasis.
"Anyway 50% is too low a bar for giant decisions, that's how you end up with stupid things like Brexit"
No, using referenda to decide big complicated policy issues is how you end up with Brexit. Referenda are bad and should never be used ever. Governments are elected to decide these things, deriving their power from the consent of the governed.
Policy should never be made by referendum. For big structural changes, they're pretty common.
Common, but, I think, wrong. Germany banned them completely after the War and I think that was the right thing to do.
25: Chile being the current case in point.
I can't agree re referenda: we've had some good ones over the years, and some bad ones too. Stakes are low enough and signature requirements high enough that it's not like California here or anything.
I'm still mad about a Fed Circuit ruling in 1997, and wouldn't be sorry if we got rid of it and spread the workload out to the other circuits. Why is circuit-level uniformity more important in patent cases than it is in cases about FDA approval of drugs? Or 1983 cases?
I was on the ABA task force charged with making recommendations to Congress on whether to continue district court jurisdiction in federal bid protest cases, or consolidate them in the CFC, with exclusive appeal to the Fed Cir. I got outvoted, by a bunch of lawyers who had much to gain from forcing litigants into a DC-based court, and who'd mostly never litigated a district court bid protest outside of DC. I'd done several, but the other guys were mostly older, and got tired of me telling them that their stupid assumptions of what must be happening in district courts weren't reality-based.
Fear of the ease with which the Algerian constitution could be changed was one of the causes of the Algerian Civil War of the mid-90s.
(I'd had one in particular that I won at the district court and then again at the Ninth Circuit. It was pretty ridiculous being told that those judges couldn't understand the federal regulations these cases turn on, or apply Chevron.)
Anyway, my Federal Circuit case was fun to work on, and even if the result was wrong, it's an interesting little dusty corner of history. It's not that long an opinion, but I think it may meet your procrastination needs.
https://casetext.com/case/abrahim-youri-v-us
Is there some reason this kind of case has to go to a specialized court? Is there something about the DC Circuit that makes it unable to handle these issues?
Judge Newman was also on the 1982 commission that recommended this court be established. Maybe their report can be dug up somewhere.
Did anyone read the deposition of her career clerk? It's bonkers.
That's just something else. She must be a Columbo fan who learned from the show.