Ruth Bader Ginsberg decides to keep on keeping on until age 90.

Or so she has informed reporters in New York.

And she appears serious.  She's hired clerks for the next two Supreme Court terms.

There's little doubt that Ginsberg remains sharp at age 85 and, given that she is still sharp at age 85, she's likely to remain so.

But there's something fundamentally wrong with a system that allows jurist to retain a position of such great important into their extremely advanced old age.  Should her mind fail, or the mind of other justices following her lead, removing them is difficult in the extreme and would frankly always impose a cloud over their final years on the bench.


And besides that, at 85, let alone 90, Ginsberg is far, far older than the majority of Americans and even lawyers.  She's occupying a position that's a public trust, but one granted her years ago by people who have long since retired or died.  Of course, she could simply be choosing to try to outlast the Trump presidency, in which case she likely guessed wrong about Hillary Clinton's chances in the last election (as I also did).  Indeed, had Clinton won, I'm still fairly convinced that her first Supreme Court pick would have been Barrack Obama.

This aspect of this system just isn't quite right any way you look at it.  The Wyoming judicial retirement age is 70.  That seems like a good system.