The salary of the humble supreme court justice – How much is enough? (Update)

Ruth Marcus sort of tries to answer the question, and fails.

Honestly, I feel like I’m missing the point, but what irks me the most about this … thing about why federal justices need a raise is the clumsy way she goes about it.

Here’s the lede. I know some of you know a little about security clearances. What does Thomas sound like to you?

Clarence Thomas was mired in debt — and fuming over what he considered an inadequate salary for a Supreme Court justice.

Yikes. In fact, forget security clearances. To anyone who knows a little bit about the motives for crime, it sounds like the first sentence in an article about someone who is about to be sentenced for fraud. Or possibly murdering a spouse for the insurance money.

But that’s as funny as this thing gets.

Widely aired in conservative circles, Thomas’s financial grievances, as outlined in a new report by ProPublica, might have helped inspire the largesse that flowed his way from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow and other wealthy supporters. “The job is not worth doing for what they pay,” Thomas would say at a speech the next year, and he pressed repeatedly to lift the ban, imposed in 1989, on justices’ accepting honoraria for speeches.

His complaints explain — although they in no way justify — Thomas’s acceptance of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of dollars’ worth of luxury travel and other benefits from conservative benefactors.

His complaints explain that like the average Republican, Thomas is greedy and crooked. And that’s it. Lots of people feel they aren’t being paid enough. But most people don’t have extremely prestigious lifetime jobs that come with six-figure salaries and top-notch benefits. Plus, when people who really don’t earn enough complain, Republicans tell them to get a second job. Or third. Or fourth.

But — and here is a sentence I am not accustomed to writing — Thomas has a point. Supreme Court justices, and their colleagues on the lower federal courts, ought to be paid more.

And why is that?

Because some people in the legal profession can have higher salaries than a supreme court justice.

And, unlike any other salary ever, federal justices’ salaries haven’t kept pace with inflation.

The injustice of it all.

And to be clear, these aren’t pauper’s wages. The chief justice is earning $298,500 this year, associate justices $285,400. Federal appeals court judges make $246,600, and trial court judges $232,600. The median wage for a full-time worker in the United States is about $60,000.

Still, that’s not the proper benchmark.

You bet it isn’t. The average full-time worker is also an at-will employee whose employer begrudgingly offers them some bullshit high-deductible health plan, if they’re lucky. If they want to go on a fishing trip with some friends they’ll have to put in a request for time off months in advance. I have no idea why Marcus bothers to mention the average worker. More of that out-of-touch punditry, perhaps. Not very good writing, certainly.

Consider that young lawyers fresh off a Supreme Court clerkship can join big law firms and pocket signing bonuses approaching $500,000 — that on top of salaries around $300,000. That doesn’t include year-end bonuses.

[…]

The lawyers who regularly appear before the justices make many multiples of what the jurists they face earn. Profits per partner at top law firms in recent years as high as $8.4 million — and the biggest names can rake in more. Justices are human, and the disparity rankles. It’s never going to be eliminated, and it shouldn’t be.

OK. But so what? No part of the Supreme Court nomination process involves kidnapping attorneys and forcing them to take the job. I assume nominees ask how much the gig pays, and if they don’t ask, they don’t care. I also assume they know how much other members of the legal profession earn.

And that ignores the larger problem of financially jealous members of the legal profession taking bribes. Or is the reader supposed to assume that pay disparities don’t rankle until the legal professional is wearing a black judicial robe?

Then there’s this. Note the sudden absence of numbers.

But it’s not too much to say that justices’ salaries should be comparable to those of, for instance, law school deans.

[Update: Campos comes to the rescue with data on law dean salaries. Also, more insights on the silliness of Marcus’ main argument, such as it is.]

Why isn’t it too much to say that? Especially because Marcus suddenly decided the reader doesn’t want to know what, for instance, law school deans earn.

Most of the current justices have spent the bulk of their careers in public service or academia, not amassing significant wealth before ascending to the bench.

I won’t say that Marcus is arguing that people who gain the security of a lifetime appointment that comes with a six-figure salary have a right to amass significant wealth, but she makes it hard not to conclude she is arguing that.

Some justices, including Thomas, can command seven-figure book deals, arrangements that can spawn their own ethical questions.

Could someone provide a quick estimate of how many law school deans who have never had a career outside of academia, have received a seven-figure book deal?

Because what I’m still hearing is Thomas’ sole cause for dissatisfaction with his financial situation is he believes he is entitled to more money. Frankly, if I were a federal court judge hoping for a raise, I’d want Marcus to stop trying to do me a favor.