Federal Judges Get a COLA
December 10, 2008, 5:01 pm
If Auto Bailout Bill Passes, Judges Get a COLA
Posted by Ashby Jones
So this $14 billion bailout bill currently making its way through the halls of Congress stands mostly to benefit the U.S. auto industry. But it also, oddly, stands to benefit federal district judges.
Here’s why: The bill attaches an annual cost-of-living adjustment — or COLA — for federal judges, which, when implemented, will bring them in line with members of Congress, who get a $5,000 boost at the start of the year. District judges and members of Congress make $169,300. Here’s the AP story. Click here, here and here for other LB posts on the topic of judicial pay, which has been raging for years.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., insisted that the judicial pay raise go into the bill. The Senate passed the judicial pay measure as a separate bill in November, but the House never acted. As a result, Reid has taken the unusual step of linking the obscure but important judicial pay issue to the unpopular auto bailout.
There is concern among many policymakers that judges are not paid enough relative to the importance of their offices, and in six of the past 13 years, judges have been denied their pay raise as lawmakers opted not to take their own COLA.
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It is DISGUSTING that items that have NOTHING to do with a bill get added to it. How does Judicial pay issue have anything to do with the automakers ?? Didn’t a lawmaker sneak in a tax exemption for makers of wooden arrows in the 700 billion dollar TARP package ??
Sickening !!!!
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Federal district judges (para 1) or all Federal judges (para 2), WHICH IS IT?!?!!?!?!? What about my Federal Circuit peeps?!?!!?
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 5:56 pm
To clarify, the auto bill contains the same COLA members already gave themselves in late September. Senator Reid and others simply want to treat judges equally. The only way to do so is to attach a provision to piece of legislation that is moving.
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 6:10 pm
The judges always get screwed!
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Don’t forget about the poor magistrate and bankruptcy judges . . . they make 8% less than district judges and need that COLA too.
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Inflation is nil, and T-Bills pay negative interest. Why should anyone get a COLA?
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 7:14 pm
If Federal District Court Judges want more money they can always go back to the private sector. Of course that would not allow them to take 2 hour lunches and leave early on Friday for that round of golf.
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 7:31 pm
What are they thinking? Surely the federal district court judges are woefully underpaid. They currently earn only $169,300 a year, which is even less than a first year associate at many big corporate law firms are paid by way of salary and bonus, and well below what senior associates earn. As many federal judges were partners at top law firms, and could be again, the nation owes a debt of gratitude to the judges for their financial sacrifice.
However, there is another side to this. A large number (and a majority on some courts) of the federal judges were appointed by W in the last 8 years. Many of those appointees with lifetime tenure(although qualified) were heavily or primarily based on ideological considerations.
So, NOT increasing judges pay via the COLA might have the salutary effect of accelerating the departure of some of the more rabidly conservative recent appointees and thus create the opportunity for the new President to appoint new judges who HOPEFULLY will come without ideological baggage of the far left or far right.
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 9:05 pm
the collapse is near.!
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 9:37 pm
9:05 — what basis could you possibly have to believe that Barrick Obama — one of the most liberal members ever to sit in the U.S. Senate — will choose any but the most liberal judges he can find? The nation is saved only by the fact that he won’t have a filibuster-proof Senate.
Comment by - December 10, 2008 at 10:16 pm
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/12/10/if-auto-bailout-bill-passes-judges-get-a-cola/
Pay raise for judges tucked into bailout plan
WASHINGTON (AP) — If the $14 billion bailout plan for U.S. automakers passes, it will help more than just Ford, Chrysler and General Motors. Federal judges would get a pay raise, as well.
The raise - an annual cost of living adjustment, or COLA - would bring U.S. District court judges up to par with members of Congress, who will receive an almost $5,000 boost on Jan. 1. District judges and lawmakers now earn $169,300 a year but are expected to be awarded a 2.8 percent raise next year, said Dick Carelli, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., insisted that the judicial pay raise go into the automaker loan measure, which is the only item of business on Congress’ lame-duck agenda.
Under ethics legislation enacted almost two decades ago, members of Congress get a cost of living raise automatically, but they have to vote to give judges an identical raise. Because the spending bill covering U.S. courts has not passed, the step is necessary if judges are going to get their COLA.
The Senate passed the judicial pay measure as a separate bill in November, but the House never acted. A House Democratic leadership aide said that while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., supports the pay raise, it was difficult for the House to hold a stand-alone vote in the midst of a recession to increase the pay for people making far more than most workers.
As a result, Reid has taken the unusual step of linking the obscure but important judicial pay issue to the unpopular auto bailout.
There is concern among many policymakers that judges are not paid enough relative to the importance of their offices, and in six of the past 13 years, judges have been denied their pay raise as lawmakers opted not to take their own COLA.
Even with the raise, judges earn far less than lawyers at big firms, just as members of Congress make less than many lobbyists.
If the pay measure fails to go through this year, judges are likely to get the increase as one of the first pieces of business next year.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JUDICIAL_PAY_RAISE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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January 26, 2007, 10:38 am
Move to Hike Judicial Pay Gets the SG’s Vote
Posted by Ashby Jones
Journal contributor Ben Winograd sent along this item on the continuing controversy over judicial pay.
As we and others have chronicled, first-year associates at a variety of law firms are now bringing home annual salaries of $160,000, before bonus. It’ll be a while before most of these twenty-somethings get to handle an argument in federal court, but while they wait, they can revel in the knowledge that they earn nearly as much as federal district judges, who make $165,200.
It’s a fact not likely to be lost on Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a former partner at Hogan & Hartson. He rankled some Supreme Court watchers a few weeks back by dubbing the failure to lift judicial salaries a “constitutional crisis.” Violins in hand, critics said the chief exaggerated the financial plight of individuals appointed for life and guaranteed at least six figures a term. In 2006, federal judicial salaries ranged from $212,000 for the Chief Justice to $165,200 for federal district judges. Cost-of-living adjustments aside, federal judges haven’t seen a pay increase since 1991.
Roberts’s cause got a shot in the arm yesterday at a panel on judicial independence organized by the Supreme Court fellows program. Former Senate majority leader Howard Baker said Congress should decouple judicial salaries from those of its own members. Under the present system, judicial pay often remains stagnant whenever lawmakers deem it politically unpopular to hike their own wages.
Also speaking at the panel, Solicitor General Paul Clement said the executive branch supports a pay raise for the federal judiciary, if only to widen the pool of prospective nominees. He said current salaries have had “an impact in terms of shrinking the pool of people that are interested in what should be a job that anyone should leap at.”
The two panelists’ support might not be all that surprising, however. Clement, a former partner in King & Spalding’s Washington office, has himself been rumored as a candidate for a federal judgeship. In 1971, President Nixon offered Baker then a second-term Republican Senator from Tennessee a nomination to the Supreme Court. But according to an account by former White House counsel John Dean, Nixon nominated William Rehnquist after Baker waited too long to accept, apparently due to concerns over the salary of associate justices, then $60,000 per year.
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