4 Retired Justices Criticize Cutback Plan : Judiciary: They warn that a proposed 34% reduction in the state Supreme Court’s budget would cause substantial delays in civil and criminal rulings.

In an unusual public plea, four retired state Supreme Court justices Monday urged the Legislature to reconsider an impending 34% high court budget cutback they said would “wreak havoc” on the judicial system.

The justices asked legislative leaders to “rise above” what was widely seen as a retaliatory move after the court’s approval of Proposition 140--the term limitation measure that mandated a 38% cut in the lawmakers’ operating budget.

The justices, joined by 10 retired appeals court judges, said in a letter that the deep court budget cutback would cause “substantial delays” in civil and criminal rulings. The reductions, they charged, were proposed “without any serious investigation.”

“We cannot sit idly by as we watch the independence and effectiveness of the California judiciary threatened in apparent retaliation for a recent decision by the Supreme Court,” the letter said. “Quite simply, the proposed cuts would render the courts incapable of fulfilling their constitutional and statutory mandates.”

The letter was signed by retired Supreme Court Justices John A. Arguelles, Marcus M. Kaufman, Otto M. Kaus and Frank K. Richardson.

Kaufman, elaborating in an interview, said that if the 34% cutback is enacted he would expect the court’s 127-member staff to be cut in half and the number of cases the court decides by written opinion--now 125 a year--to be substantially reduced.

“Frankly, I don’t see how it could function with that level of funding,” he said.

Kaufman also said it is possible that the court might be forced to take the highly unusual step of filing a lawsuit to challenge the cutback as a way of protecting the judicial branch of government. If such an action was taken, the issue probably would be referred to a special panel of appellate justices, he said.

“All that might be very unseemly,” Kaufman conceded. “But they are no longer equal branches of government if one branch fixes it so the other no longer has minimum funds to operate.”

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), two of the leaders to whom the letter was addressed, had no comment. But aides pointed to the severe nature of the state budget crisis and said that a variety of agencies and services will be affected.

“If the percentage of the court cutback stays at 34%, this would be just one of many instances where services are going to have to be pared back in order to close this huge deficit,” said Jim Lewis, a spokesman for Brown.

Steven Glazer, a spokesman for Roberti, said: “The budget crisis is extraordinary and forces the legislators to do many things they would never normally support.”

The jurists’ plea was the strongest yet in legal circles against proposed court cutbacks in the face of a $10.7-billion state budget deficit. Last March, an Assembly subcommittee recommended cutting the high court budget 38%--the exact percentage mandated for the Legislature under Proposition 140. A recent compromise with a Senate subcommittee calls for the 34% cutback.

In the high court’s requested $17-million budget, about $7 million involves non-discretionary spending--including $4.9 million to pay court-appointed lawyers to handle cases of indigents.