Judicial Integrity and Budget Cuts in the States: Is the Devil in the Details?

Abstract

Judges and scholars have asserted that many state legislatures may threaten judicial integrity though severe budget cuts. Specifically, state court judges are facing difficult salary cuts as a result of current budget battles, which may be triggered in part by policy conflicts over the public interest between majoritarian legislatures and rights-oriented judges. While Article III of the U.S. Constitution protects federal judges' salaries from budget battles, state constitutional protections are varied, even nonexistent, in a significant number of states. We develop a correlational model of the factors correlated to state constitutional protections of state judges' salaries (N=50), as well as a path analysis of correlates to state spending on courts. We examine possible influences on state constitutional protections of judicial salaries and state spending on courts, such as indicators of state political ideology, socioeconomic condition of the states, and the state court system and conditions of the state judiciary. Our findings and discussion may be of further utility in predicting changes in state constitutional protections of judicial integrity.