Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Editorial: Cheap justice is poor justice
Recent hostility toward the judiciary is no excuse for underfunding the third branch of government.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
The legislative and executive branches of government have been checking and balancing the federal judiciary into a fiscal crisis.
When the courts do not have sufficient resources to fulfill their constitutional duties, the equilateral triangle of government flattens, imperiling fundamental liberties and protections.
Newly enrobed Chief Justice John Roberts, in his first annual report, repeated the refrain of his predecessor, William Rehnquist: The courts need more resources.
An increasing caseload -- thanks to a growing population, a more litigious society and elected officials willing to pass brazenly unconstitutional laws -- threatens to swamp the judiciary and dilutes the time judges can devote to each case.
Yet the most recent comprehensive judicial expansion and reform came in 1990, and 15 years of minimal action have left the bench understaffed.
A judicial review board last year conservatively calculated that the nation needs 68 new trial and appellate court judges. Virginia's eastern court district would receive two of them.
Less visibly, but no less important, the judiciary has had to cut about 1,500 non-judge employees in the last couple of years. They are the clerks, administrative assistants and others without whom the courts close early and delay hearings.
Some of the money the judiciary needs to address such problems could be saved if the General Services Administration, which leases space to other government agencies as part of the great federal dollar shuffle, would cease its price-gouging.
The judicial branch owns the Supreme Court building but, in 2005, paid $926 million rent for its other facilities. The GSA's cost for providing that space, Roberts observed, was only $426 million.
Roberts' only recommendation that bears careful scrutiny, one Rehnquist also made, is higher salaries for judges. The chief justice claims too many jurists flee to the private sector where the paychecks are juicier.
No doubt the private sector does pay many attorneys well, and the judicial branch should not become a target of excessive parsimony.
But bankruptcy judges, the least-paid federal judges, receive $152,000 this year, and Roberts himself will earn $212,000. Those income levels fall comfortably in the top 10 percent of all Americans.
If money drives district and appeals court judges -- not civic duty, the security of a lifetime appointment or a passion for justice -- then their defection suggests a troubling deterioration in the civic awareness of the American legal as well as political culture.
Americans receive the government they pay for. As an independent check on the other branches and guardian of the Constitution, the judiciary is not something on which to skimp.
