Judges’ pay still not adequate, lawmakers told

BOISE – Despite an increase in judicial salaries last year, Idaho still does not offer enough compensation to attract the high-quality candidates the state should want deciding its cases, Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Schroeder told lawmakers in his State of the Judiciary address on Monday.

The Legislature boosted Idaho from 49th in the country to 47th in terms of pay for state Supreme Court justices last year, Schroeder said. Trial court judges’ salaries still sit at 47th.

At the same time, the state’s caseload continues to balloon, he said. Schroeder, who will retire this summer after 38 years as an Idaho judge, said judges today face workloads that would have been “unthinkable” when he first took his seat.

As long as compensation fails to stay competitive, the pool of high-quality candidates for Idaho judgeships will continue to shrink, Schroeder said.

“The public expects judges to be intellectually superior, to isolate themselves from normal social contacts, to forgo normal business opportunities. The age and experience requirements ask lawyers in the prime of their experience to give up much more lucrative opportunities,” he said. “Professional requirements, caseloads and compensation, the reality of costly elections after giving up other financial opportunities, are all taking their toll.”

The current salary for Idaho’s Supreme Court justices is $110,500 a year, up from $104,168 last year. The national average for state supreme court justices is $137,074.

Magistrate and district judges face demanding work, and not just in terms of caseloads, Schroeder said. Their jobs often ask them to make difficult decisions that have tremendous effects on people’s lives.

“They routinely must take a person’s freedom, deprive a person of a livelihood because he or she cannot be licensed to drive, determine multimillion-dollar probates, wrestle for solutions for abused children, fashion sentences for juvenile offenders, attempting to guess the future consequences, and on and on,” he said.

Court representatives will meet with heads of the Judiciary Committee and the Joint Finance-Appropriation Committee sometime early in the session to discuss court funding – including potential salary increases, said Patti Tobias, the state courts administrator for the Idaho Supreme Court.

Schroeder said the Legislature could help the courts carry their burden in other ways, too, such as supporting the expansion of new drug and mental-health court systems. He said those have the potential to provide “incredible” savings by providing an alternative to prison for some offenders.

Finally, this year the Idaho Supreme Court will be looking at ways to put its law library to use as a learning resource for legal students in the state, Schroeder said. In the future, its learning program could even expand to create an apprentice system for undergraduates who want to learn more about the legal system, he said, or for law school students to study law at the highest level.