I think God approves of you.

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

Didn’t realise there was this type of information out there

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

I enjoyed reading your blog. It is so interesting reading other peoples personal take on a subject.

I can believe that judges deserve a raise, but not based on Justice Roberts’s evidence, which is weak and not very well argued. And I guess I have to accept that it’s understood within the legal profession that those lawyers who serve the public are not as bright as those in private practice. I think that you all need to prove that to the rest of us who might be skeptical of that belief. There was no evidence for that assertion. I could possibly believe it based on my own short-lived experience working in government, but you do have to prove it. I guess it’s based solely on the notion that bright people clearly want to make more money. The most money, in fact. Well, sometimes that’s true, sometimes it’s not.

As for judges, perhaps their spouses can go to work. Many low and middle class households cope with an excess of expenses in this way. I suspect that many judges do have a second household income already, so their judicial salary is not entirely what they live on.

And by the way, I’m a primary care provider and I wish that preventing illness garnered as much money as treating conditions once they already occur, e.g. surgeons. But the health care financing incentives seem not to go that way. Surgeons aren’t better paid because they’re brighter than the rest of us.

Plus, they have not been given adequate raises for a long time. And we’re not just talking about the SCOTUS. This involves all federal judges, who would seemingly be more susceptible to unscrupulousness, having less spotlight and all.

My two cents.

You mean making money is the primary concern of a corporatist???

Say it ain’t so!!!

Whodathunkit?

So Roberts isnt barking up the wrong tree but he is barking up the wrong branch.

Actually, that’s part of his point. Good judges are leaving the bench. That creates vacancies. Vacancies create backlog. Backlog means justice – our constitutional rights, not being enforced.

Nearly all the posters here seem to be taking the attitude that it’s his pay at issue. He is advocating for the bottom rung on the judicial ladder. That’s where the judges are leaving. That’s where the lack of a cost of living raise year after year takes its toll, and makes returning to the private sector more and more attractive.

Think about it this way: There’s a large Corporation. It’s bylaws provide that every pay raise, including cost of living increases, must be approved by the shareholders. For 20 years the shareholders have refused to give a cost of living increase. The Chief Executive Officer notices the attrition in the work force and sounds the alarm. The shareholders respond by noting the CEO makes plenty. And so the situation continues, with more and more workers leaving, and fewer people willing to work for what the Corporation will pay. Eventually, there are not enough workers left and the Corporation collapses.

The Legislative Branch can starve out the Courts.
The Executive Branch can refuse to enforce Judicial Decisions.

And if we keep heading down the path we are on, we are going to need the Courts. A lot.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/judicialnominees/roberts.html

In 1992, when Chief Justice Roberts was 37, President George H.W. Bush nominated hom to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The nomination languished without action by the Senate.

In January 1993, Justice Roberts returned to Hogan & Hartson and resumed his appellate practice.

Including his tenure as a government lawyer, Chief Justice Roberts argued 39 cases before the United States Supreme Court, placing him among the country’s most experienced Supreme Court litigators.

Chief Justice Roberts’ Supreme Court arguments alone span a vast set of issues within the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, including admiralty, antitrust, arbitration, environmental law, free speech/religion, health care law, Indian law, bankruptcy, tax, regulation of financial institutions, administrative law, labor law, federal jurisdiction and procedure, interstate commerce, civil rights, and criminal law.
In addition to representing business interests, Chief Justice Roberts at different times represented the States of Hawaii, Alaska, and Nevada in defending diverse state social, health-and-welfare, and environmental policies before the United States Supreme Court.
He was retained by the various state attorneys general pursuing antitrust claims against Microsoft to defend the district court’s remedial orders before the D.C. Circuit.
From time to time he also represented criminal defendants and indigents on a pro bono basis.

“…After a two-year hiatus from government service between 1986-1988, Roberts returned to a Republican administration to take the post of Deputy Solicitor General. In this capacity he argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government, winning well over half of them. When Democrat Bill Clinton won the 1992 Presidential election, Roberts returned to private practice. He became a partner at Hogan and Hartson, a prestigious Washington, D.C. firm, where he ran the appellate division and continued to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

Roberts worked for Hogan and Hartson for the next decade, earning a yearly salary of more than $1 million…”

Oh, I see. He took a pay cut, now want’s pack pay…