The Debate Over Judicial Pay Raise Still Goes On.

BLT:

As Congress veers closer to an across-the-board raise for federal judges, the great pay debate rages on in the legal community. (Click here for our previous coverage.) Earlier this month, Scott Baker, a professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Law, published an op/ed in the Los Angeles Times, describing a study in which he found that the robed ones’ performance was not affected by their pay. Boiled down, Baker says there’s no reason to throw money at judges unless it supercharges their work ethic:

In a time of strained budgets, both Democrats and Republicans need to make hard choices on spending priorities. Federal judges earn six figures. Why choose to pay judges more — as opposed to equally deserving, lesser-paid federal employees such as park rangers, members of the military or FBI agents — if it ultimately makes no difference to how well the judges perform their jobs?

Today, Law.com’s Howard Bashman takes a swipe at Baker’s reasoning in this commentary:
Baker did not ask federal appellate judges whether they would work harder or reach better reasoned or more exacting rulings in exchange for more money. Rather, he undertook a statistical study, from which he ultimately concluded that, overall, higher salaries would not affect the judges' work habits and the quality of their resulting rulings — one possible exception being that they might dissent more frequently if they were better paid.

“The fact that federal appellate judges would not work harder or rule more soundly for more money is not an argument against raising salaries,” Bashman says. “Rather, it is for the sake of retaining these hardworking individuals and ensuring a continued supply of high-quality judicial candidates that a meaningful federal judicial pay raise should, at last, be enacted.”A bit of background on the bills being considered in Congress: Under the Federal Judicial Salary Restoration Act of 2007, federal district judges would earn $218,000 annually, uncoupling them from members of Congress, who make $165,200 a year. Federal appeals judges would earn $231,000; Supreme Court associate justices $267,900; and the chief justice $279,900.
The bill broke out of the House Judiciary Committee last month, but the Senate’s version is still waiting for a committee vote.