Not so long ago, Chief Justice Marston Gibson remarked on the fact that judges of the Supreme Court were forced to retire at the relatively early age of 70, even though quite often they were still of sound intellect and quite capable of rendering further useful and sagacious judgments, thereby contributing to the public good.
We feel that the Chief Justice has raised a matter of importance specific to the judiciary but also of critical importance to the society generally. The fact is that when it comes to retirement, especially in the Public Service, there is a “one size fits all” policy, which does not do justice to the person who is in good health and who wishes to continue to offer his or her talents to the public good.
In an era in which many more Barbadians are living to very ripe old ages, it is astonishing that many relatively sprightly people whose intellects and other physical health are good are forced to succumb to some mandatorily imposed retirement age.
Quite often these retirees are lost to the Public Service and promptly continue to display their talents and continuing intellectual skills for the private company or other organization wise enough to tap such accumulated experience for their own benefit.
But quite often the benign or malevolent mandate is just another symptom of the way in which the society treats elderly people even if they are not destitute. Age seems in many cases to be just the number at which a sign switches on and signals that the person must go home irrespective of his or her capacity to carry on.
As it happens, this approach is not confined to our country. The Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Judge, 71, was recently turned down as a guarantor of his daughter’s loan simply because, as he learnt after filling out and submitting the guarantee form, he was “too old”.
The judge made light of the incident, but the reality is that there are many people in such situations who receive similar shrift when dealing with financial institutions anywhere. Ironically, at a time when medical science and enhanced knowledge about the human body allow us to take better care of ourselves, we still seem to be adhering to notions of age retirement which seem to belong to a less enlightened era.
We have well known local examples of legal and other professionals who, having had to leave their public positions, are practising as arbitrators or chairing public inquiries, or are otherwise being engaged as consultants and mediators.
About three years ago, Lord Hoffmann, once described as the brightest lawyer of his generation, retired from the House of Lords at 75, but promptly began practice as an arbitrator. He joined the Queen Mary College of London University as an honorary professor of law, where that college boldly declared that “his unrivalled knowledge and experience of law means that his contribution is felt across the whole of the school of law”. But he was lost to the judiciary!
So Chief Justice Gibson is not alone in recognizing the loss of talent, especially when one considers the accumulated experience lost at an instant.
It is worth noting that all the professions in this country have many members well past their threescore and ten, of sound mind and body, and still of acute intellect, carrying out their tasks with high skill and competence.
A pertinent question which we must examine is whether, as a young nation without the depth of the talent pool which abounds in larger countries, we can afford such an early loss of proven talent.
The Chief Justice’s comments are timely even if a little provocative, but they ought to make us think a little more about mandatory retirement rules and how they may not always work to public advantage.
That said, age cannot be the only consideration.
