Corpulent Paychecks for New York Judges and Justices

Abstract

In Maron v. Silver (2010), five judges of the New York Court of Appeals decided that state judges and justices may sue in state courts for higher salaries. One Court of Appeals judge held that state judges and justices were precluded from suing. The one judge was correct. In response to Maron, the Legislature provided for sequential commissions. Upon the recommendation of the 2011 Special Commission on Judicial Compensation, judges and justices were granted a salary rise of about 27%, in three stages: April 1, 2012, April 1, 2013, and April 1, 2014. The salary rise was unwarranted: 1. Moderate judicial salaries, judicial tenure, the prestige of judicial office, public-employment benefits, and a public-employment retirement plan, are sufficient recompense. 2. No one is dragooned into judicial employment. A judge or justice who feels financially constricted by judicial employment is able to leave it. He can return to private practice, hang out a shingle, and work for a living as the rest of us do. 3. Unlike practicing attorneys, judges and justices do not need to earn money with which to make profession-related expenditures (such as office rent and support-personnel salaries), and judges and justices are not exposed to entrepreneurial risks (such as clients dumping attorneys and malpractice lawsuits). 4. Judges and justices are political rewardees, not jurists of renown. 5. Scholarship does not support the hypothesis that raising salaries improves judicial performance. The next Special Commission on Judicial Compensation will come into existence on April 1, 2015. There should not be a salary rise then, or afterward, until long-standing shortcomings of the New York judiciary – creaky judicial machinery, twenty-hour work weeks by judges and justices, judicial corruption, low per-diem jury fee, and misuse by prosecutors of grand juries as rubber stamps – are cured. See New Judiciary Article for the New York Constitution, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1455502.