Roberts, like Scalia, has hand out

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invention_45

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http://www.local10.com/politics/10650452/detail.html

Looks like Roberts has jumped on the "give us a raise" bandwagon.

Let me start out by saying I personally know a few lawyers. Three of them have money to burn, and any information gotten from them is terse at best.

The others are assistant prosecutors, paid state salaries. If you catch them when they can't avoid you, they'll talk to you and explain things for up to a half hour.

What makes the difference?

Well, the three (one of whom is a judge) are far-removed from a peon like myself. Whereas the others are a little closer in stature, perhaps having a little more empathy than the first group.

So it seems that right now we have relatively (to private practice) low-paid judges (if you call $165,000 low-paid) who consider this their living money, and who just might think of themselves as a little closer to ordinary people, and low-paid judges who retain the job because they can afford to ignore the low salary and probably think of ordinary people as those from the "other side of the tracks".

In other words, there's a mix.

Now, what is going to happen if we raise judges' salaries to $500,000?

Many more judges will be further removed from those of us back in the 5-figure category, and will empathize accordingly.

Let's just say we keep it like it is, with COLA adjustments, of course (not that I get any of those).

Judges find private practice more lucrative and leave the bench. There are fewer judges, and fewer cases can be handled. We call this smaller government. Those cases that are chosen to be heard (and not dismissed) will be the more important ones (murder, terrorism, battery, rape, kidnapping, robbery) and those spurned more likely to be the silly ones (drugs, porn, prostitution, McDonald's coffee, God on the money).
 
Most of the ones I know that are corporate lawyers or partners in medium or large firms made waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over the $165,000 you cited.

The question is, do we want to attract the successful lawyers or only the ones at the bottom of the pay scale? We can worry about keeping the good ones after, and if, we can get them in the system in the first place.

I don't find your reasoning to be sound in many respects concerning how the system currently functions economically.

John
 
Yeah, I'm of two minds on this. $165,000 and up sounds like a darn good wage to me. Especially when you consider their retirement benefits. BUT... it's hard to deny that a good Federal judge couldn't make FAR more money in the private sector or even by going into academia and teaching. Are we really "better off" as a community if the best legal minds aren't working as judges because they have to take too much of a salary hit? Then we just have the lowest tier minds plus those people who REALLY want to be judges. And that last group has to make you at least a little worried. Wouldn't a person like that have an agenda by definition?

I don't know what the answer is. Something in the middle probably!

Gregg
 
In the 1950s, 65 percent of U.S. District Court judges came from the practicing bar and 35 percent came from the public sector. Today the situation is reversed, Roberts said, with 60 percent from the public sector and less than 40 percent from private practice.
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Roberts said the judiciary will not properly serve its constitutional role if it is restricted to people so wealthy that they can afford to be indifferent to the level of judicial compensation, or to people for whom the judicial salary represents a pay increase.
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These are logical arguments.
 
Here in New Jersey we have an appointed judiciary which pretty much serves as a retirment home for politically connected lawyers. To the tired old
argument that "higher salaries are necessary to get good people" I quote
the following:
"There has never been any shortage of candidates for judicial office no matter what the salary."
Long time New Jersey State Senator the late Wayne
Dumont, responding to a 1990 salary hike proposed by then Governor Florio.
"The people who want to becaome judges are people who couldn't earn a
living as lawyers"
A top NJ lawyer speaking to me in 1981.
And I respond as follows:
"You're unhappy with you compensation, you think you deserve more? Go
Find Another Job."
 
Why don't they just give themselves a raise. They're pretty proficient at making up lots of other laws without the publics' consent.
 
Same tired subject, with same "wrong side of the tracks" attitudes. Get a grip! If you feel inferior to judges or anybody else, that's between your ears, not theirs. Could be it's because what's between their ears that they're not shuffling along on five figures.

I didn't listen to all of Justice Roberts' statement, but it seemed to me that he was looking for pay increases for all Federal judges.
 
Stifling my cynical nature I'd say we are warranted in raising salaries of federal judges if we deem the turnover to be excessive and in fact due to uncompetitive wages.

Now let me engage my cynicism and say fresh blood is healthy. Since federal judges have lifetime appointments they only way we have change is by keeping these people uncomfortable. Congress refuses to deal constitutionally with wayward judges and court systems. Congress refuses to serve as a a check and balance over judicial idiocy. Therefore the only hope for change we out here in flyover country is for these guys to voluntarily seek to better themselves somewhere other than the federal bench.

Until congress grows a spine I'd just as soon keep our federal judges uncomfortable.
 
Until congress grows a spine I'd just as soon keep our federal judges uncomfortable.
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The ones that stay are perfectly comfortable - sticking to precedents and ruling in favor of the government.
 
Samuel Chase is this fellow.

Chase was served with 6 articles of impeachment by the House of Representatives in late 1804, explicitly over Chase's handling of the trial of John Fries. Two more articles would later be added. The Jeffersonian Republican-controlled United States Senate began an impeachment trial against Justice Chase in early 1805, primarily revolving around allegations of political bias. The Senate voted to acquit Chase of all charges on March 1, 1805, and as a result remained in office. As of 2007, Chase remains the only U.S. Supreme Court justice to have been impeached. His acquittal is believed to have helped ensure that an independent Federal judiciary would survive partisan challenge in the U.S.
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They can be impeached.

All one has to have is the political balls that T. Jefferson and his team had.
 
One thing that has always struck me as odd.

Originally, the pay for Federal Service was vary low. A pittance, actually. The idea behind this was to encourage participation by all citizens and not to have professional politicians.

Regardless of the rhetoric, Judges are still politicians. The only difference between the Judiciary and the other two branches is that the Judiciary is not elected. Does that automatically mean that they should earn more money? That's what the private sector is for.

I can see the point of the day-to-day government worker earning a decent wage. But elected and appointed officials should do so as a service to the country, not because of the money it brings them.

I don't care if the cost of living in DC is so high as to bankrupt an individual (and it simply can't be, judging solely by the wages the average Joe makes), perhaps our elected and appointed officials need a slap upside the head by reality... They might not be so frivolous with our tax monies. And they might also spend less time in DC, so as to get back home where it costs less to live!

Regardless, as far as the Courts go, I don't think more money will make these fine folk work harder or longer. If any courts deserve more money, it would be the district courts and the appellet courts. Their work load is actually staggering. I would be opposed at giving the Supremes another red cent, though. They already spend more time on the speaker circuit than on actual cases... A work load (actual cases taken) that has dropped and continues to drop with each passing year.
 
Antipas: You make some good points about public service; however, for the richest land in the world to pay the nine members of the highest court in the land just a pittance more than a Superior Court Judge in some rural Southern circuit makes is nonsensical to me.

As far as the pay level of Federal Judges, even if they were paid $300,000 per year for the lower courts and $500,000 for the Supreme Court, that wouldn't be unreasonable to me. Lawyers of the caliber about which we're speaking make a LOT more money than that!

Lawyers with no experience, fresh out of law school, who are in the top 20% of their classes can expect to start @ $125,000 or so, plus benefits. Consider facts like that in the Grand Scheme of Things, and maybe paying 9 Justices a pittance of what they could earn in the private sector might not seem too unreasonable. (And $500,000 annually WOULD be such a pittance!)
 
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