Roberts again urges salary increase for federal judges in year-end report

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Roberts again urges salary increase for federal judges in year-end report

January 2, 2008 06:54:00 am

[JURIST] US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts [OYEZ profile] used his 2007 year-end report [PDF text] on the federal judiciary to urge Congress to increase the salaries of federal judges and to increase communication between all branches of government. In the report released Tuesday, Roberts repeated his call for judicial pay raises [JURIST report], saying Congress should act on legislation currently under review which would raise judicial salaries [US Courts materials]:

The pending legislation strikes a reasonable compromise for the dedicated federal judges who, year after year, have discharged their important duties for steadily eroding real pay. This salary restoration legislation is vital now that the denial of annual increases over the years has left federal trial judges – the backbone of our system of justice – earning about the same as (and in some cases less than) first-year lawyers at firms in major cities, where many of the judges are located.
I do not need to rehearse the compelling arguments in favor of this legislation. They have already been made by distinguished jurists, lawyers, and economists in congressional hearings, letters, and editorials – and seconded by a broad spectrum of commercial, governmental, and public interest organizations that appear as litigants before the courts. I simply ask once again for a moment's reflection on how America would look in the absence of a skilled and independent Judiciary. Consider the critical role of our courts in preserving individual liberty, promoting commerce, protecting property, and ensuring that every person who appears in an American court can expect fair and impartial justice. The cost of this long overdue legislation – less than .004% of the annual federal budget – is miniscule in comparison to what is at stake.

The House Judiciary Committee approved a draft bill [HR 3753 materials; JURIST report] last month that would stop judicial pay from being set at the same level as members of Congress. The bill would raise salaries for district judges to $218,000 per year; federal appeals judges would make $231,000 per year and associate Supreme Court justices would earn $267,900. The Chief Justice would earn $279,900. The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering the Senate version of the Federal Judicial Salary Restoration Act of 2007 [S 1638 materials] which would raise salaries even more than the House version.

Roberts also used the report to stress the importance of communication within the government. He said of the separate branches:

Each has a valuable perspective on the other. The Branches already engage in constructive dialogue through a number of familiar forums, including the Judicial Conference, congressional hearings, and advisory committee meetings. But the familiar avenues are not necessarily the only ones. …
The separate Branches may not always agree on matters of mutual interest, but each should strive, through respectful exchange of insights and ideas, to know and appreciate where the others stand.

AP has more.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.