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Opinion L.A.

Opinion: Not a real mouse, your honor

By Michael McGough
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Slate has a disquieting piece about the unintended consequences of life tenure for judges, one of which is senility. Read it and weep for defendants who come before an addled octogenarian.

My one complaint about the piece is an anecdote at the beginning about an 84-year-old judge who didn’t know what e-mail was. He asked lawyers gathered in his courtroom if e-mail ‘pops up in a machine in some administrative office, and is somebody there with a duty to take it around and give it to whoever it’s named to?’

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I know: OMG. But I’m sympathetic to people, judges and otherwise, who aren’t au courant with technology. I have a BlackBerry but haven’t learned to use most of its functions. I have never tweeted or played a Blu-ray.

OK, a judge who doesn’t know (or forgot) what e-mail is probably shouldn’t be on the bench, but I worry about what will happen to good, non-senile judges who are deliberately unacquainted with electronic gizmos. The young and computer-literate can be harsh judges.

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--Michael McGough

Opinion L.A.
Michael McGough

Michael McGough is the Los Angeles Times’ former senior editorial writer, based in Washington, D.C. He wrote editorials for The Times from 2006 to 2021. Before that, McGough worked for 30 years for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as a reporter, editorial writer, editorial page editor and Washington correspondent. He wrote about law, national security, politics, foreign policy and religion. McGough is a graduate of Allegheny College and also attended the University of Kent at Canterbury in England and Yale Law School, where he received a master of studies in law degree.

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