Chief Justice Urges Raise for U.S. Judges BRIEFLY: WASHINGTON

Chief Justice John Roberts urged U.S. lawmakers Monday to give federal judges a raise because low salaries are undermining the strength and independence of the courts. “The time is ripe for our nation’s judges to receive a substantial salary increase,” Roberts wrote in his annual report on the judiciary. “Congressional inaction in the face of this situation is grievously unfair.” The report is the chief justice’s second since he joined the Supreme Court as its leader in September 2005. Roberts’s focus on judicial salaries continues a mostly unsuccessful campaign initiated 20 years ago by his predecessor, William Rehnquist. Aside from “occasional and modest cost-of-living adjustments,” Congress has not given the judiciary a raise since 1989, Roberts wrote. A “bad situation” has “reached the level of a crisis,” he said.

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