Academic

So, here's the letter -- you guess the identity (or position) of the writer:

After a career in public service, I regretfully say, I would not do it again. Philosophy and point of view led me to doing good instead of doing well, so I never expected to become rich. But now that I'm in my 10th year of a frozen judicial salary -- less than summer students are being paid at law firms -- I have concluded that whatever I may have accomplished for the public, I have wasted 25 years of my life by serving on the bench.

The writer is Emily Jane Goodman, a New York Supreme Court Justice. (For those of you who don't watch Law & Order or practice in NY, she's a trial court judge.) Not being up on the New York judicial pay litigation, I looked around on the internet, and Judge Goodman, who had an illustrous career as a public interest attorney before running for judicial office in 1980, has been outspoken on this issue in other fora as well. I know we have debated judicial pay outrage in the blogosphere before, and I have always supported judicial pay raises, but the letter reminded me of this Law and Order dialogue between Jack McCoy and Judge Ruth Alexander, just as she is being arrested for accepting bribes and murdering a litigant to cover up the scheme. (Note, this episode is under litigation for a different reason, which I blogged about before).  I can't find the dialogue on the internet, but a paraphrase would be:

Judge:  Do you know how much I make?

McCoy:  More than me.

Yes, judges should make more, but it is hard to get public support when they make more than 90-something percent of the country, including other law school graduates who have made similar career choices to make less than a first-year BigLaw associate:  district attorneys, U.S. attorneys, public defenders, legal aid lawyers, and yes, many law professors.  But it is disheartening to read such regrets in the NYT editorial page.