COLUMBIA — It is widely understood that the South Carolina Constitution prohibits judges on the state Supreme Court from serving past the age of 72.

Former Speaker of the House Jay Lucas — an attorney and career politician with only one year of judicial experience to his name — insists that’s not the case.

In an exchange that left the leader of the state’s judicial vetting panel “dumbfounded,” the 69-year-old Supreme Court candidate and 24-year Republican representative from Hartsville asserted Nov. 17 that the state’s long-established mandatory retirement age only applied to the state’s retirement system.

That means, as he sees it, he could serve on the state’s high court conceivably for the rest of his life as long he declines to draw a pension.

The claim stunned many of the lawmaker

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