We
must have men worthy and equipped to carry out impartial justice.
But, at the same time, we must have judges who will bring to the
courts a present-day sense of the Constitution--judges who will
retain in the courts the judicial functions of a court, and reject
the legislative powers which the courts have today assumed.
In forty-five out of the forty-eight states of the Union, judges
are chosen not for life but for a period of years. In many states
judges must retire at the age of seventy. Congress has provided
financial security by offering life pensions at full pay for
federal judges on all courts who are willing to retire at seventy.
In the case of Supreme Court justices, that pension is $20,000 a
year. But all federal judges, once appointed, can, if they choose,
hold office for life, no matter how old they may get to be.
What is my proposal? It is simply this: whenever a judge or justice
of any federal court has reached the age of seventy and does not
avail himself of the opportunity to retire on a pension, a new
member shall be appointed by the President then in office, with the
approval, as required by the Constitution, of the Senate of the
United States.
That plan has two chief purposes. By bringing into the judicial
system a steady and continuing stream of new and younger blood, I
hope, first, to make the administration of all federal justice
speedier and, therefore, less costly; secondly, to bring to the
decision of social and economic problems younger men who have had
personal experience and contact with modern facts and circumstances
under which average men have to live and work.
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