Danforth, Gephardt: Raise judges' pay

WASHINGTON - Former Sen. John Danforth and former Rep. Richard Gephardt signed on to a letter sent last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee advocating a break in the 20-year link between the salaries of federal judges and members of Congress.

Danforth, a Republican, and Gephardt, a Democrat, are two of eight former members of Congress who signed the letter. They say judges' salaries must rival those of private-practice lawyers to maintain a talented judiciary.

Members of Congress have hitched their salaries to judges' but rarely give themselves a pay raise to avoid drawing the ire of voters at election time, when talk of approving your own pay raise doesn't play well on television.

"They don't want to see a commercial in the next campaign saying, 'Sen. X voted for pay increases,'" Danforth said. "Their interest in voting against pay increases shouldn't penalize judges."

The linkage has kept legislators' pay steady and also stifled the pay of judges, according to a report released last month by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

Federal district judges make the same salary as members of Congress, $165,200. Private-practice lawyers can earn anywhere from $100,000 a year, the salary of an entry-level lawyer in the St. Louis area, to more than $1 million a year, which Chief Justice John Roberts earned before taking an $800,000 pay cut to join the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gephardt said the link came from Constitutional entitlement attitudes in Congress that equal pay should be afforded to equal branches of government.

As lawyers' salaries continued to skyrocket, Congress voted nine years in a row, during Gephardt's tenure, to forgo the annual cost-of-living increase for themselves and, consequently, for federal district judges.

With salaries flat-lined in public service, the salary gap between judges and private-practice lawyers widened.

"For somebody who is a practicing lawyer, often times to become a federal judge would be an enormous sacrifice," Danforth said.

But some legislators and legal scholars say a federal judgeship comes with other perks - a lax performance review, a lighter workload and more power and prestige - that make the pay cut worth it.

Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, said taxpayers would be reluctant to support higher salaries for a positions that already attract qualified professionals.

"There are lots of talented lawyers or academics who would love to become federal judges if the opportunity were to arise," Somin said.