Sandy Levinson at Balkanization, upset about the relatively meager salaries of federal judges as they compare to even first year law school graduates at corporate firms, has in mind the perfect way to further compromise the judicial branch of government. It's really funny.
As is well known, John Roberts has been complaining that we face a "constitutional crisis" because of the meager salaries received by federal judges. For a variety of reasons, it appears highly unlikely that members of Congress are going to vote to pay federal judges considerably higher salaries than the legislators receive. So the solution seems obvious. The judiciary should take a lesson from leading academic institutions as well as contemporary athletics and orchestras. Why shouldn't John Roberts become, say, the Cravath, Swaine, and Moore Chief Justice, with his taxpayer-provided salary supplemented by whatever CS&M thought suitable? And, of course, each of the Associates could fill a seat named after the donor, with the attendant salary supplement. (If the name and supplement are linked with the seat, then assignments would change as membership on the Court changed. The former junior Justice, Stephen Breyer, would have served his eleven years as the West Publishing Co. Junior Justice, a "chair" taken over now by Samuel Alito, and now might be the Exxon-Mobil or Walt Disney Associate Justice.)
This is ideal, as Exxon-Mobil never has--and surely never will--appear before the Supreme Court. Nor will Disney. And Cravath, Swaine, and Moore will never ever represent a client before the justices whose salaries they will, in this alternate universe, be paying.
Lawyers are smart, though, and predicting this line of criticism, Levinson goes on to say--with tongue, I hope, planted sharply in his cheek:
Questions might be raised, of course, about the willingness of judges to remain sturdily independent when hearing a case involving "their" donor, but if the gift is irrevocable, we should certainly have at least as much faith in their capacity to be independent as when, say, they are hearing cases brought by the Administration that appointed them with certain hopes in mind.
Verily.
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