Yesterday, Justice Fernandez-Vina turned seventy years old. That is the mandatory retirement age for judges, which Justice O’Hern, for whom I clerked, referred to as “the age of constitutional senility.” Accordingly, Justice Fernandez-Vina’s service on the Supreme Court has come to an end.
Governor Murphy has not nominated anyone to take Justice Fernandez-Vina’s seat. If Chief Justice Rabner opts to fill that seat temporarily by promoting an Appellate Division judge, as was done when Judge Fuentes was tapped to fill the seat vacated by Justice LaVecchia (a vacancy for which Governor Murphy re-nominated Rachel Wainer Apter, whose nomination remains pending), the next senior judge in the Appellate Division would be Judge Fisher.
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