The American Judiciary, page 259 by Simeon E. Baldwin
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s offered to one of the members of the Court of Appeals to induce him to resign, but the year after his resignation the statute was repealed on the ground that it was unconstitutional.[Footnote: Sumner, "Life of Andrew Jackson," 120.] Since 1869, the United States have allowed their judges who have reached the age of seventy, after not less than ten years' service, to retire, at their option, receiving the full official salary during the remainder of their lives. Rhode Island gives hers the same privilege after twenty-five years' service, and Massachusetts and Maryland have somewhat similar provisions, except that the judges on retirement receive but part of what they formerly did. The Connecticut legislature is in the habit of appointing her judges, both of the Supreme and Superior Court, when retired at the age of seventy, State referees for life, with an allowance of $2,500 for salary and expenses, their duties being to try such questions of fact as the courts may refer to them and to report their conclusions.
Our State Constitutions now generally provide that judges shall hold no other public office. Some also provide that all votes for any of them for any other than a judicial office shall be void.
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Occasionally a judge, in order to eke out his official income, accepts a salaried position, calling for but little of his time, in a matter of private business employment. This, however, is rarely done and there are obvious objections to it when the employer is one likely to have business before the court. Many of the judges of the higher courts, including several of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, are professors or lecturers in law schools.
The best mode of appointing judges is that which secures the best men. Such men are unlikely to accept a place on the bench of one of the higher courts, unless it carries with it some prospect of permanence. It does, if it comes to them by way of promotion after they have served acceptably for a length of time in an