Justice Kennedy Warns of ‘Crisis’ Over Judicial Pay
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy told a House subcommittee yesterday that the failure to give federal judges a pay raise has reached the level of a “constitutional crisis.”
A proposal to hike judicial pay has made some progress in both houses of Congress, but nothing is final, Legal Times reports. Kennedy and a fellow justice, Clarence Thomas, both urged quick action.
“We are losing our best judges; we can’t attract them, we can’t retain them,” Kennedy told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. “If we don’t get relief, there will be an exodus of judges” leaving the bench for jobs at triple the pay in arbitration and private practice.
Both justices said they disagree with proposals to tie a pay raise to limits on the amounts judges can earn by teaching or speaking engagements. Teaching is “a wonderful way to think about the law,” Thomas said.
Kennedy also called for pay raises in testimony last year (PDF), according to the ABA Governmental Affairs Office, which lists pay for Supreme Court justices at $203,000 and for district court judges at $165,200.
