Chief Justice Roberts- Don't let the door hit you...

In his second annual report, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made judicial pay the sole topic of his second annual report ominously predicting that Congress’ failure to raise federal judges’ salaries in recent years has become a “constitutional crisis” that puts the future of the federal courts in jeopardy.

The first thought that came to my mind upon reading this gem was “this is what our greatest judicial minds believe is worthy as the sole topic of an annual report?” And to call it a “constitutional crisis”? No, a constitutional crisis I’m thinking would be an unlikely event like the U.S. Supreme Court halting the recounting of valid ballots in a presidential election. But that is just the thought of a common mind, not the thought of high intellectuals like the members on the Supreme Court.

I give the learned Justice the fact that judges pay has fallen behind the national average for wages. Welcome to public service. You are in the same position as all those non-thinking public lawyer bureaucratic drones that you diss in your annual report.

In the report, Justice Roberts states that federal judges are being increasingly drawn from among lawyers working in the public sector, rather than the private sector. He states, “It changes the nature of the federal judiciary when judges are no longer drawn primarily from among the best lawyers in the practicing bar.” What unmitigated arrogance from our Justice Roberts who was pulling down a million per year in his private practice before being appointed as a justice. This from our venerable Chief Justice who parlayed his Republican appointed public service jobs in the U.S. DOJ and the Office of Whitehouse Counsel into his cushy private sector job?

And who do you think would make a better federal district judge? One who has been in the trenches of public service as municipal court judges, common pleas court judges, state appellate and Supreme Court judges, or a $300 per hour corporate counsel rainmaker from a large city law firm? I’d put my fate for justice in the hands of a long-term public servant judge before I’d stick my neck in the noose before some overpaid former lawyer that specializes in clogging the court system. I have seen loyal government public servant attorneys eat high-priced lawyers for lunch. So much so, that the next move is for these large law firms is to summon their “lobbying” arm to change the law for their client.

So go ahead Congress, give the whiner a raise, but don’t do it because you believe Justice Roberts’ unsubstantiated proclamation that private attorneys make better judges. And as for Justice Roberts’ assertion that “[i]nadequate compensation directly threatens the viability of life tenure,” I say, that is your choice to leave public service. We really do not want you in the judiciary for life anyway.