Pay Justice for Judges

The state's Chief Judge, Judith Kaye, was clearly angry last week when she delivered a speech in response to the scuttling of a pay raise for judges in the final state budget. She had good reason to be.

As she noted, "It is disgraceful that we have been brought to this point, that for more than eight years, longer than any other judges in America - likely longer than any workers in any field - New York State judges, for no reason other than Albany politics, have been denied even a cost-of-living adjustment to their salaries."

She pointed out that pay for state judges is 23 percent below that of Federal judges. To put that in perspective, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, has decried the compensation rates for members of the Federal judiciary. Four decades ago, U.S. District Judges made 21 percent more than the dean of a top law school; today their pay is about half the average salary for those deans.

State legislators, looking to avoid public criticism for raising their own pay, have coupled such increases to hikes for judges. Governor Spitzer supported raises for judges as much-needed, but he opposed a boost for legislators, with one reason being that he believes any hike should be accompanied by measures restricting the outside work they could do to prevent conflicts of interest.

As Ms. Kaye pointed out with justifiable frustration, no one is questioning the need for a significant hike in judicial salaries in order to attract and retain high-caliber individuals for the bench. And they should not, as she noted, be held hostage to the pay aspirations of state legislators.

Unlike legislators, judges are not permitted to maintain private law practices, and Judge Kaye rejected the suggestion by some colleagues that they be permitted to do so. The reason is obvious: it would raise questions about whether those retaining them were doing so to buy influence and affect decisions by their colleagues.

Nor, she insisted, should there be any reason for the public to wonder whether judicial rulings have been influenced either by the granting or denial of pay raises as a result of legislators' actions.

She said it would be "ill-conceived and counterproductive" to follow the lead of some Long Island judges and file a lawsuit over the compensation issue at this point, but she left it open as a possibility if judges' pay has not been raised before the Legislature adjourns in June.

It shouldn't come to that. Mr. Spitzer and legislative leaders need to figure out a way - and quickly - to address the problem and allow for the long-deserved increases to be implemented.