If it's true that you get what you pay for, Arkansas has found a real bargain in its Supreme Court justices, whose pay has been standing still while that of judges in nearby states like Louisiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Tennessee has risen.
Now comes Chief Justice Dan Kemp of this state's Supreme Court asking for a modest pay raise for this state's judiciary, and for good reasons. To name only one of them, our Supreme Court justices didn't get cost-of-living raises even as the pressures of their jobs increased with a series of executions and last-minute appeals descending on the court. These are life-and-death decisions, and they take their toll on those who are asked for make them.
There may be some of us who would be all too happy to pull the switch on condemned men, but there should be, and is, a distinction between vengeance and justice. And many of us are understandably relieved when the burden of making that distinction is left to those who have made a profession of drawing fine lines in difficult cases. Which is one reason among many to leave such judgments to the judges instead of the easily stirred man on the street. Why should the pay of judges be higher than that of the average Arkansan? Because those judges are qualified to make such judgments--if We the People aren't willing to settle for average justice.
To quote His Honor David Guthrie, a circuit judge in El Dorado and head of the Arkansas Judicial Council, this all too modest pay increase being requested by the state's chief justice on behalf of the judicial branch of state government is "consistent with the economic indicators. We think it is modest, reasonable and certainly appropriate."
But didn't the state's judges just get their salaries increased a couple of years ago? Yes, they did, and they were appropriately grateful. But let's remember, as Judge Guthrie does, that the pay hike "was generated because of a failure in the preceding years to have these COLA [cost-of-living adjustment] increases, and the salary level in real money then fell behind economic indicators and a substantial increase was therefore necessary."
What's more, "We think that simply staying with COLA increases may be a little more palatable [in] the view of your work and certainly to the taxpayer. We do not like as judges to come hat in hand seeking these increases." For this state's judges should not be beholden to anyone for their pay. Nor should they be bound by anything but their oaths of office.
Why not pay our judges salaries that are comparable to those offered skilled attorneys in the private market? "These are contentious times that we have," as Judge Guthrie noted, and when have they not been? For ours continues to be a litigious society.
Barbara Graves of Little Rock, a member of the citizens' commission entrusted with setting judicial salaries, took a businesslike approach when she expressed concern that this state's elected officials will fall behind their peers in other states as year after year goes by and "we don't do anything" except waste time, which in this instance really is money. "So I do think," she concluded, "that the 2 percent is an appropriate and reasonable request and, as we consider this in a future meeting, I think the same 2 percent should be looked at for all these categories" of state officials.
It's called planning ahead, and it's about time Arkansas did more of it. Rather than set salaries for our public servants on an ad-hoc harum-scarum basis. Or else We the People will continue to get judges that are more like loose cannons rolling around with no guidance except their own inflated egos and exaggerated sense of their own importance as they confuse the bench with their own private bully pulpits.
A much older code than the Arkansas statutes commands us: Justice, justice thou shalt pursue. But what is justice and at what price should it be pursued? That ancient code of law explains: This is what the Lord doth require of thee--only to do justice, love mercy and live humbly with thy God. Surely that is not too much to ask nor too little to expect of our judges, who are well worth their hire.
Editorial on 05/20/2017