FIGHT THE POWER: Colleagues Want A 95-Year-Old Judge to Retire; She’s Suing Them Instead.
Pauline Newman specializes in dissent. In her 40-year career as a federal judge, she has written more than 300 dissenting opinions. So when the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said she thought it was high time for the 95-year-old to retire, Newman offered a differing view:
Nope.
The oldest active federal judge in the nation has instead sued her colleagues and accused them of violating the Constitution, which says nothing about mandated retirement for lifetime appointees. Those colleagues have accused her of misconduct, saying she can no longer do the job she is guaranteed for life.
Newman is working steadily from her light-filled office on Lafayette Square, overlooking the White House and the Washington Monument. She is surrounded by glass awards and photographs with Supreme Court justices; her court handles patent cases, and so there are diagrams of inventions, including her own. Newman, who turns 96 in June, has no interest in going anywhere.
“It’s important to the nation, if I can say so,” Newman said. “If I really were debilitated, as they say, physically and mentally, I hope I’d have the sense to step down. But as it is, I feel that I can make a contribution and must. That’s what I was appointed to do.”