The Oldest Bench Ever: Extreme aging in the federal judiciary—and the trouble it causes.

As if the criminal justice system weren't arbitrary enough.

Judge Richard Owen of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan gathered a group of lawyers in his courtroom in 2007 to discuss the possible leak of sealed documents in a business case. As the hearing got under way, Owen, then 84, asked for someone to explain this newfangled mode of communication the lawyers kept mentioning: e-mail. "It 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?" he asked.

Federal judges are getting older—and more often senile. - By Joseph Goldstein - Slate Magazine