Chief Justice Roberts devoted his entire 2006 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary to one issue, raising Judical pay. He says this "has now reached the level of a constitutional crisis."
"Congress has not acted on judicial pay for 2007, so for now salaries remain at their 2006 levels. That means Roberts will continue to be paid $212,100 a year, with associate Supreme Court justices at $203,000, appeals court judges at $175,100 and federal district judges at $165,200."
By today's standards those numbers are a good salary but not enormous. Still it's hard to argue that these people can't have a good quality of life. I've yet to see a description of their benefit plans and there is that little nicety of lifetime employment. And to be a federal judge, they've probably been employeed at one of the high paying jobs Roberts compares them to.
Matthew J. Franck has not been convinced by Robert's arguments. He claims Robert's cherry picked his years of comparison, choosing a time when judges were particularly overpaid.
Oh and so far the Supreme Court has issued only six opinions this term compared with 13 by this point in the last term. SCOTUSBlog has some further thoughts on the docket. This New York Times article from early December is particularly good on the topic, suggesting perhaps there is less for them to be doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment