政務二課

ABA President Karen Mathis told her membership Monday that district judges, who earn $165,200 a year, certainly should be paid more than first-year lawyers at New York City firms. Starting annual salaries there now are $160,000. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker recently wrote that district judges would be making roughly $100,000 a year more today had their pay risen at the same pace as U.S. salaries generally.

Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye on Friday termed the ongoing and as yet unsuccessful battle for judicial pay raises the "ultimate assault on judicial independence."

The Constitution itself says little about federal judges, except for two provisions: life tenure, and a bar against reduction of their salaries. Both, says Duff, are "pillars of judicial independence," and both are "directly in play" because of the current level of pay for judges. Judges have long argued that when Congress does not even give them cost-of-living adjustments -- none was given last year, or in several years during the 1990s -- it is, in effect violating the salary-reduction provision of the Constitution. Real earnings of judges have declined by nearly 25 percent since 1969, Roberts pointed out. But the impact of salary on the life-tenure provision of the Constitution is emerging as a strong argument as well, Duff says. Judges are leaving the bench at a higher rate than ever before -- 17 in the past two years alone -- obviously shortening their tenure. Beyond that, at a more subtle (though equally ominous) level, Duff expressed concern that the purpose of life tenure might be thwarted in other ways by salary concerns.

Issuing an eight-page message devoted exclusively to salaries, Roberts says the 678 full-time U.S. District Court judges, the backbone of the federal judiciary, are paid about half that of deans and senior law professors at top schools. 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.