Are Federal Judicial Salaries Adequate?
by Martin Magnusson, Editor-at-Large Supreme Court Justices earn $203,000 a year. While this is a substantial amount of money, it pales in comparison to what these nine men and women could make if they were in private practice. Indeed, the signing bonuses that large firms award former Supreme Court clerks rival the annual salaries of the justices. Remarking on this fact, Justice Kennedy has said that the parity between the justice salaries and clerk bonuses “devalues the position of the judiciary.” The American Bar Association recently concluded that “judicial salaries are now so inadequate that they threaten the stability and diversity of the federal bench.” An increase in judicial salaries was long championed by the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, who would frequently raise the issue in his annual state of the judiciary reports. Chief Justice Roberts has taken on the struggle for judicial pay increases and recently noted that at current salaries, “you no longer can draw the best trial
