U.S. Judges Advised to Lobby Congress for a Boost in Salary

For Owen M. Panner, the time had come to the draw the line. The silver-haired federal judge from Portland, Ore., strode to the podium and told a large group of his colleagues that bold action was needed.

“The only way to deal with this problem is personal contact,” he proclaimed at a meeting of federal judges in Dana Point last week. “Don’t underestimate your power with your senator or congressman, even if you don’t know him. They have to understand we’re being abused; we’re going to stop being abused.”

Panner, now in his 10th year as a federal judge, is accustomed to issuing discourses on knotty issues of federal law. But this day he was talking about the simplest of issues: money. Panner, 64, called on his colleagues to launch a major lobbying campaign and told them they must get organized district by district, with every judge taking responsibility for talking to lawmakers.

Long considered an elite group, anointed by presidents and blessed with lifetime appointments, the cream of the nation’s bench, 1,100 federal judges, maintain that they are significantly underpaid, and are in the uncomfortable position, as several put it, of “grubbing for money.”

“This is unique,” said William J. Rea, now in his fifth year as a federal judge in Los Angeles, referring to the lobbying effort Panner urged. There was nothing on the official agenda of the annual conference of the U.S. 9th Circuit Judicial Conference about salaries, but talk of it came up frequently in meetings and informal chats in the hallways of the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

When Panner and his colleague Justin Quackenbush were selected by President Jimmy Carter as district judges a decade ago, they started out making $54,000 a year. Now, they are up to $89,500.

Quackenbush, 60, readily acknowledges that to “the guy on the assembly line that looks like a heckuva good salary.” But he quickly adds that “my 36-year-old son is in private practice in Seattle and he makes more than twice as much as I do.”

Pay Raise Killed

At the start of the year, the district judges expected a pay hike of 50% that would have brought their pay up to $135,000. Pay of federal appellate judges, now $95,000, and of federal bankruptcy judges and magistrates, now $82,000, would have been increased commensurately.

But their hopes were dashed on “Black Tuesday,” Feb. 7, when Congress, under intense public pressure, voted down a pay raise for itself. The judges’ salary hike, tied to that of the Congress, went up in flames, too.

Earlier this month, President Bush said he favors a 25% pay hike for judges and a variety of other federal officials, and legislation to that effect will be considered later this year. Virtually all the judges who expressed dismay that they were not being paid enough conceded that they did not expect to get rich on the bench. But during the last decade, the incomes of lawyers in private practice, particularly those working at large, elite firms in big cities, have skyrocketed, widening the gap between what a judge and a private practitioner can make.

Particularly galling, several of the judges said, is the fact that many of them now find themselves earning less than young men and women, barely 30, who were their law clerks a few years ago and currently have salaries exceeding $100,000 at big firms in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

Consider Quitting

Dickran M. Tevrizian, a federal district judge in Los Angeles, said some of his colleagues were considering stepping down from the bench because they were having a hard time keeping up with their mortgages and college tuition payments for their children. “You don’t want to have a situation where only the wealthy will be able to be federal judges,” he said.

Several judges referred to a study done by the Judicial Conference of the United States last year that said that if there were not significant increases soon there would be “a subtle and insidious diminution in the quality, stability and independence of the federal judiciary through increasing inability to attract the best of the legal profession.”

U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh told the judges in a speech that the Bush Administration already has experienced “some resistance in recruiting” potential federal judges because of current salary levels.

Thornburgh said he and President Bush “are committed to a redress of the situation which has seen a 30% decline in judges’ purchasing power since 1969.” The attorney general said it is “no coincidence that more judges have left office in the federal court system since 1969 than in the entire 180 years preceding that year.”

In fact, there was only one public voice of dissent about the salary issue here. That came from Stephen Z. Meyers, one of the founding partners of Jacoby & Meyers, one of only two large law firms in the country that provides modestly priced legal services.

‘Hard to Be Sympathetic’

“As a Democrat talking to a group of mostly Republican judges appointed by conservative presidents, it’s hard to be sympathetic to the plight of someone making $90,000 a year,” Meyers said at a panel on the future of the legal profession. He noted that the Reagan Administration had “cut back health, welfare and legal services for the poor” and that Bush had recently vetoed an increase in the minimum wage, “that even if passed” would have yielded a salary of less than $10,000 a year.

“I would tell Atty. Gen. Thornburgh that if he is looking for some good candidates to be a federal judge that he should call my friend Jose Padilla, who runs California Rural Legal Assistance, where they have some very good and experienced lawyers and the top salary there is $45,000,” Meyers said.

Meyers’ comments aside, it was some of the Democratic judges who were the most vocal on the pay issue. District Judge James A. Redden, a former Oregon attorney general, said that some judges had long-standing ties to congressmen and “we ought to take advantage of that.”

He also urged his colleagues to “bring in the heavy hitters, the rich and powerful,” who come before the federal courts and have an interest in a strong federal bench.

Shunned Lobbying

“Judges have always stayed away from lobbying,” Panner said, acknowledging that some of his colleagues felt uncomfortable about asking for more money. “But the judiciary can’t remain strong if there isn’t fair pay,” he asserted. He made it plain that he has no reservations about assuming a role akin to that of a union bargainer heading into tough negotiations.

Panner also is making the campaign bipartisan, noting that District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler, a 1984 Reagan appointee, is one of his key people in organizing judges to lobby for congressional support.

Some of the judges said they felt particularly uncomfortable about talking about low-pay amid the splendor of the Ritz-Carlton, one of the swankiest resorts in Southern California with majestic views of the Pacific. But conference officials and several of the judges were quick to point out that they had gotten “bargain rates” of $115 a room, less than half the normal rate.