The poor "forcibly" retired judge Lack, member of judicial pay-raise commission, advocate of elderly judges

Retired judge, and now simply a private attorney James Lack, according to seethroughny.org, retired as of 1/31/2011, and draws a "pauper's" pension of $99,078 per year, with benefits.

In 2015 James Lack was appointed to a panel deciding judicial pay raises - instead of elected legislators - which is unlawful per se.

As part of his "service" to that panel, James Lack engaged in the following lamentations about - guess what - age discrimination against poor New York State judges (by the way, until that "discrimination" concerned state judges, state judges happily applied judicially invented "tiers" of review where age discrimination is on the bottom, with a "rational basis" test).

Here is one of his lamentations at the December 7, 2015 "public hearing" before the Commission, you can read the full transcript of this hearing here, and transcripts of the other two hearings, of December 2, 2015 and December 14, 2015, respectively, here and here. 

Imagine the misery of "having" to retire from an "underpaid" position with a full pension of $99,000 a year or more, not counting benefits, and ability to work as a "judicial hearing office" and/or private attorney, coveted by any law firm with a do-nothing-just-be-there job paying $250 or more per hour!

And imagine the misery of having 20% of New York judiciary "having" to retire over the next 4 years because they reached the age of 70 or 75 years of age.

I understand, there is absolutely no young blood among the 400,000 licensed attorneys in New York, so that the same slow-paced seniors should handle the "fast-paced" New York courts in 20% of cases, that is every 5th case!

And, pouring in the young blood into the judiciary is now called - by one of the "forced retirees", of course - a 19th Century constitutional provision.

I agree that certain provisions pertaining to judiciary - like the concept of absolute judicial immunity for malicious and corrupt acts on the bench, or the concept of "service" for life, or for 10-year or 14-year terms, are very "19th century", and that judgeships should become a rotational duty of every citizen, paid on a cheap per diem basis without any benefits.

That would be 21st century to me as a taxpayer and litigant, and that will at least start to detract from the perceived omnipotence and impunity of judges, as well as will undermine the well-entrenched culture of judicial corruption, which the Commission is part of.

I also got a kicker out of how two private attorneys, Cozier and Lack, called each other "Judge Cozier and Judge Lack".  I guess, this omnipotence and impunity is so attractive that one cannot peel the "judgeship" off long after "forcible" retirement.

Or is it dementia?