Judges" Ability, Not Age - NYTimes.com Re "Too Old to Judge? Albany Considers Raising Age Limits for State's Courts" (news article, June 5): Raising the mandatory retirement age of judges to 80 is about as logical as enacting anti-discrimination laws that apply only to people whose skin is no darker than a particular shade of brown. Rather than treating judges as incompetent once they reach a certain age, New York should rely on nondiscriminatory procedures for removing all incompetent judges from office, regardless of age. And the claim that "forced retirement encourages diversity" overlooks the fact that excluding people older than 80 is just as harmful to diversity as excluding women or blacks.