Litigation

Chief Justice Passes on Judicial Salary Issue

By Peter Hardin

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. (photo at right) declined to wade into the controversial topic of increasing judicial salaries when he submitted his Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary.

Roberts “apparently concluded that an election year in which belt-tightening is the new mantra was not the time to revive the debate,” the Washington Post reported in an article.

Concern about the adequacy of federal judicial salaries made news in 2009, especially when a California judge quit over what he called inadequate pay, and a chief district judge in California lamented a “crisis of retention” on the federal bench; you can read these stories in Gavel Grab.

A year ago, the Post reported, Justice Roberts urged that judges should get at least the same cost-of-living adjustments as other federal workers and members of Congress, and that was accepted by Congress. The chief justice is paid $223,500. U.S. circuit judges receive $184,500 a year and district judges, $174,000.

In his report, Justice Reports wrote, “The courts are operating soundly, and the nation’s dedicated federal judges are conscientiously discharging their duties.”

In New York, meanwhile, the state Commission on Judicial Conduct censured Judge Larry M. Himelein of Cattaraugus County for his stating in e-mail messages sent on a mass basis to other judges that declining to handle some kinds of cases was a tactic that might help win a pay increase from state legislators. The tactic, according to an article in the New York Times, was aimed at getting the judges to decline to handle cases by law firms employing part-time state legislators.

Full post as published by The Gavel on January 04, 2010 (boomark / email).