Considering the $2 billion dollars that we send to military operations overseas every week, the release of Chief Justice John Roberts’ annual report yesterday, which exclusively focused on the pay of federal judges could not have come at a more appropriate time. There have been several landmark cases that have already been decided since the War on Terror began and it will be interesting to see how their decisions are received and treated in the future.
Now, it’s hard to sympathize when federal district court judges are paid $165,200 annually and appeals court judges make $175,100 (the eight associate justices of the Supreme Court earn $203,000 and the chief justice gets $212,100). But, Roberts does have a good point; the judiciary can not function effectively if it is restricted to people so wealthy that they can afford to be indifferent to the level of judicial compensation, or to people for whom the judicial salary represents a pay increase.
Congress needs to rethink it’s fiscal philosophy and prioritize the equitable compensation of the judiciary before their lobbyists and donors. It is essential that the benches of federal courts are filled with the best and the brightest – the talent pool should not be unfairly directed towards the wealthiest only.
It might to be instructive to remember that for a few hundred years the best and the brightest in the government of England came from the ‘upper’ reaches of a rigid class system.
They were probably good men for the most part, but the security ensured by their exalted social status made them blind to the plight of the common man caught up in the struggle for survival in the England of the Industrial Revolution.