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Earlier there was a request to the staff
advisor of the Committee on the Judicial
Branch to review carefully the various sec-
tions of this Committee Recommendation
in order to answer several questions pro-
pounded by Delegate Sherbow, which were,
one, whether under the sections as amended
by the Committee of the Whole this morn-
ing, could a member of the judiciary be ap-
pointed as a lay member or elected as a
lawyer member of a commission and, two,
if so, would the amendment eliminating the
words "nonjudicial" in lines 16 and 19 of
section 5.20 operate to prevent the promo-
tion of such a judge from one level to
another?
The staff advisor, Mr. William H. Ad-
kins, advises me he has reviewed the sec-
tions carefully and he thinks the answer is
in the third sentence of section 5.20 which
provides as amended that a member of
the commission may not hold any public
office of profit, or office in a political party
while a member of the commission; the
judge being the holder of an office of profit
would not be eligible as a member of the
commission.
The second question would therefore not
arise, in other words, he could not be ap-
pointed as a lay member. He could not be
elected as a lawyer member.
Are there any further amendments to
section 5.21? The Chair hears none, and
Delegate Johnson, do you still desire to
offer your amendment to section 5.22?
This will be amendment I, Amendment
No. 46.
The Clerk will please read the amend-
ment.
Will Delegate Clark please take the
podium?
(At this point, First Vice-president
James Clark assumed the Chair.)
READING CLERK: Amendment No. 46
to Committee Recommendation JB-1, by
Delegates Johnson, Harkness, Hickman,
Kahl, Murphy, Siewierski, Rush: On page
7 in section 5.22 Retirement of Judges
strike out all of lines 7 through 10, in-
clusive.
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding) :
The Chair recognizes Delegate Johnson.
DELEGATE JOHNSON: Mr. Chairman
and fellow delegates, the effect of this
amendment which I see is being distributed
to you at this time would be to provide
very simply that on the retirement of
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judges, "each judge shall retire at the age
of 70."
Under the opinion of the minority mem-
bers of the Judicial Branch, retirement, if
that is a proper term, ought to be just
that, retirement. If additional judges are
needed because of increased case load, then
additional judges should be selected. We
would hope that the delegates to this Con-
vention would agree that our state system
is far different from the federal system.
On rare occasions as some of you know,
unusual matters between states arise and
the Supreme Court is called to arbitration.
Cases of this nature have been handled by
retired justices because of the uniqueness
of the case and the long processes involved
in adjudicating them.
Because this very unusual situation
arises in the federal system in the opinion
of the minority it does not mean we should
subject our retired judges to additional
work on a state level.
May I point out as noted in our written
report, this chance for continuing retired
judges in office poses some very real and
very serious problems about the nature of
judicial retirement.
We are greatly concerned about what the
word "temporary" means. When we con-
sider that together with the difficulty of
dissension on the bench with respect to
which a so-called retired judge will con-
tinue to sit and the practical administra-
tive matter of retirement — such as whether
or not a retired judge will continue with
his pension or whether or not he will be
paid a salary, the minority concludes that
although we wish to protect constitutional
flexibility with respect to judicial organiza-
tion and administration, there is no real
need for flexibility in this manner.
It has been my understanding that the
Maryland State Bar Association has re-
peatedly turned down a move to have
retired judges in Maryland returned to the
Bench and if they have reversed that pro-
cedure I am unaware of it.
There is some real merit in the ma-
jority's proposal and they can make that
a good case by saying retired judges should
be used if needed. But fellow delegates,
when you consider all the practical prob-
lems that a situation like this will create,
I feel certain that most of you will agree
with us that there is not a need to place
this responsibility on our Court of Appeals
and on our retired judges and therefore we
urge you to vote for this amendment.
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