Federal Judiciary and Courts

Judge Pauline Newman, a 98‑year‑old judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit who has been barred from hearing cases since March 2023 over questions about her mental fitness, has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case and restore her ability to sit. Newman, a Reagan appointee and longtime patent‑law heavyweight, refused to undergo examinations by court‑selected doctors and instead presented evaluations from her own physicians, which her lawyer says found her competent, arguing she is being punished for being slow to write opinions and for frequently dissenting. An internal judicial conduct and disability committee, made up of senior federal judges, rejected her due‑process claims in a March 24 decision, stressing that she still holds her office, retains a clerk, and continues to receive salary and benefits, and therefore has not been deprived of a protected property interest. Newman counters that the effective suspension from case work for three years without any formal incompetence finding is unprecedented and sets a dangerous precedent that allows colleagues to "bully and intimidate" judges they dislike off the bench, a concern that resonates with ongoing public debates about lifetime tenure, aging judges, and the opaque way the judiciary polices its own. The Justice Department, which is defending the Federal Circuit in the dispute, declined comment, and legal observers note that while Supreme Court review is a long shot, the case is forcing rare scrutiny of how federal courts handle allegations of judicial disability and fitness in an era when the average federal judge is 69.