SCOTUS: The World's Best Part-Time Job!!!

by anonymous DailyKos blogger Bouldergeist (reproduced here with author's consent)

   Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens had a Sarah Palin Moment last week:

Seated in a comfortable chair on a stage at the University of Florida recently, Stevens betrayed no sign that he is preparing to retire, remarking only that if the court had maintained the same heavy caseload today it had when he became a justice in 1975, "I would have resigned 10 years ago." [cite]

It's a freakin' PART-TIME JOB!!!

  And despite the dire financial straits we find ourselves in as a nation, these lazy bastards have the temerity to ask for a pay raise?

Justice Roberts: Our Judges Really Suck!
   Being a federal appellate judge is a really sweet gig.  You don't have to punch a time clock.  You can work as hard or as little as you want to.  You can be as senile or incompetent as you want to be.  And as long as you don't get caught hiring high-priced hookers wholesale like this guy (disgraced former Chief Judge Edward J. Nottingham of the District of Colorado, pictured on the left; "Paulie Walnuts" is on the right),

                                                   

you are guaranteed a salary for life -- and full salary upon retirement.  But yet, $175,000 a year simply isn't enough to live on.

   In his annual report on the state of the federal judiciary, Chief Justice Roberts whined that federal judges weren't being paid enough, precipitating a constitutional crisis.  "It changes the nature of the federal judiciary when judges are no longer drawn primarily from among the best lawyers in the practicing bar."[cite]

   When you think about it, Roberts' admission is damning: Judicial salaries are so low that we can't get competent people to sit on the bench.  And, if a lousy $175,000 a year with spectacular benefits won't attract good people to the bench, what does that say about state judges who earn less?  It's not like there is a shortage of applicants; hell, some potential judges are even willing to pay bribes to obtain a judicial sinecure.  And in the Bush administration in particular, federal judgeships were scarcely more than patronage positions.  As the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals:

[John] Jones [a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania], a former attorney in private practice, gave $1,000 to the state GOP and $1,000 to Sen. Santorum’s political action committee after having interviewed for the judgeship. He also gave more than $1,000 to state and local Republicans after his August 2001 interview process, including $380 to his county Republican committee. Overall, Jones gave about $15,000 in federal contributions to Republicans from 1990 to 2001, including more than $4,000 each to both Sens. Specter and Santorum. Jones had been involved in Republican politics, making an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1992, and serving on the finance committee of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee from 1999 till his nomination. He also has hosted fundraisers at his house for Sens. Specter and Santorum, as well as other Republicans. [cite]

Money Trails to the Federal Bench, Center for Investigative Reporting, Oct. 31, 2006, at 50.

   We may not have the best judiciary in the world, but we certainly have the best judiciary money can buy.

The Modern Supreme Court: A Part-Time Job?
    The problems with the Court are exacerbated by the fact that being a Justice has almost become a part-time job, as the Justices are just too busy writing paeans to themselves, officiating moot court competitions, attending secret junkets offered by the Federalist Society, or duck hunting with Dick Cheney (which takes on a different meaning when you go with Cheney) to attend to their day jobs.  In the past 20 years, their work output has declined by roughly 50% (from an average of 155 signed opinions for 1984-85 to less than 80 in 2004-06), despite the fact that petitions for certiorari have nearly doubled during that time.  [Cite at 979, 982, 987.]

The modern Court has abandoned wide swaths of the law, as anywhere from 60-80% of its meager docket is dedicated to resolving conflicts between various courts of appeals.  What's more, the Court has abandoned any and all pretense of policing irregular, censurable, and otherwise outright corrupt decisions of lower appellate courts, with instances of pure error correction occurring so rarely as to be remarkable. About the only time it ever happens is when both parties confess that the lower court got something obviously wrong.

This, in turn, leads to a patently bizarre state of affairs: While the Court pores over the language of its decisions in minute detail to ensure that they are coherent and unequivocal, lower courts are free to disregard these literary masterpieces at their leisure, as the Court can be counted on to overlook the intransigence of these inferior courts.  Above the marble columns of the U.S. Supreme Court building it says "Equal Justice Under Law" -- which obviously isn't true when there is absolutely no chance that the Court will review a case involving a significant error.

At the end of the day, if your basic human rights have been sodomized by a state or federal appellate court, the U.S. Supreme Court is no refuge to you.  Your chances are enhanced if you are a billionaire who can afford the services of Baker and Botts or have the star power of an Anna Nicole Smith, but if you are just an average Joe or Joan, the chances of your securing justice are considerably worse than of winning a Powerball jackpot (assuming an average of $20,000 spent on a cert petition).

   If federal judges actually did their jobs in a reasonably competent manner -- actually earning their pay -- the argument for a judicial pay raise might be credible.  But like the Big 3 auto executives, who flew their private jets to Washington to beg for a loan, federal appellate judges in particular seem to spend the bulk of their time doing anything other than what we pay them to do.

Let's Pay Them What They Are Worth!
   The good news is that Congress doesn't appear particularly interested in feathering federal judges' nests this term.  Legal Times reports:  

Automakers were not the only ones left empty-handed at the end of last week's lame- duck session of Congress. The federal judiciary's long quest for salary increases made little progress -- though hope remains that the post-Thanksgiving session will bring some results.

"We continue to work daily with the leadership to rectify this problem the judiciary confronts," says James Duff, director of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. The Judiciary Committees in both houses had endorsed increases earlier in the session, but budget constraints and, most recently, the financial meltdown, have made further progress tough.[cite]

   It is hard to justify a pay raise for the kind of fourth-rate work our judiciary trowels out.  Indeed, to hear Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit tell it, it is remarkable that federal appellate judges show up for work at all:

A federal judge can be lazy, lack judicial temperament, mistreat his staff, berate without reason the lawyers and litigants who appear before him, be reprimanded for ethical lapses, verge on or even slide into senility, be continually reversed for elementary legal mistakes, hold under advisement for years cases that could be decided perfectly well in days or weeks, leak confidential information to the press, pursue a nakedly political agenda, and misbehave in other ways that might get even a tenured civil servant or university professor fired; he will retain his office.

Richard A. Posner, Overcoming Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1995) at 111.

  Just as Rick Wagoner is not worth the $21 million GM is paying him, justices like Clarence Thomas are certainly not worth the $255,000 they are asking for -- especially, because they make almost ten times as much as authors on the side.  Jon Wiener of The Nation reports:

The publication facts behind Thomas's book ought to be discussed by all the candidates: he received an advance of $1.5 million in 2003 from HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. If you thought the Court dealt with any issues of relevance to Murdoch, you might call it a conflict of interest for Thomas to accept that payment--far more than any sitting justice ever received from any single source. At least you might mention the fabled "appearance of impropriety." You might call the $1.5 million a thank-you gift from Murdoch for services rendered. You might even wonder if it might be a subtle suggestion to other justices who will be ruling on Murdoch-related issues in the future. [cite]

  The typical federal judge is a frustrated hall monitor, who is attracted to the bench by the prospect of unbridled power.  Many judges (those who have attained senior status, and are eligible for retirement on full salary) actually do the job (albeit on a part-time basis) for free.  At bare minimum, they do not deserve a substantial increase in pay.