Legal News

Fed Up With Stagnant Salaries, Judge Says See Ya Later

By Dan Slater

Chief Justice John Roberts, July 13, 2006. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

It’s been some time since we chronicled the efforts of John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to win a pay hike for judges. (Though the topic was all the rage in 2007.) As far as we know, there’s still nothing to report on that front — a fact that apparently accounts for the following bit of news.

Senior U.S. District Judge James T. Giles says prospects for judicial pay raises don’t look good. And he’s had enough. Citing “financial reasons,” Judge Giles (Amherst, Yale Law), who served a seven-year term as chief judge of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1999 to 2006, is returning to Pepper Hamilton, where he worked for 11 years before winning an appointment in 1979. Here’s the story from the Legal Intelligencer.

Giles, 65, told the Legal Intelligencer that he would’ve stayed on the court if a “meaningful” judicial pay raise had been passed by Congress. The federal judiciary hasn’t had a salary hike in more than a decade, Giles said, and the cost-of-living increases it did get were “insufficient.” “If there’s not some movement on the salary front, more senior judges will leave,” Giles said.

According to the Legal Intelligencer, federal district court judges are currently paid $169,300 a year (putting them just beyond the typical base pay for first-year law firm associates), appellate judges $179,500, associate Supreme Court justices $208,100, and the chief justice $217,400. All are permitted to earn an additional $21,000 a year for teaching.

Giles said that he was at one point hopeful that Roberts’ lobbying efforts would pay off, but that he ultimately realized that the issue was too “politicized” and that judicial salaries were likely to remain stagnant.

Law Blog Extra: Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William W. “Billy” Wilkins is also returning to private practice. Wilkins (Davidson, U. of South Carolina law) will join the Greenville office Nexsen/Pruet, one of the largest law firms in the Carolinas. As far as we know, he has not cited financial reasons as a factor in his retirement decision.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 07, 2008 (boomark / email).