A reader asks me to blog about an expose in this Sunday’s New Orleans Times-Picayune, calling it “appalling.” In 2003-2004, one judge (presumably the highest-spending judge) spent $16,717/year on travel, compared to the average $8,000 spent by other judges.
I don’t know whether this is a good judge or a bad judge, but that shouldn’t matter to my analysis. I’m less appalled. Someone has to be the highest-spending judge, and this one doesn’t appear to have violated any rules. $4,400 in taxpayer money was spent to teach a course in Colorado, but if the judge had been reimbursed by the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel, different people would be complaining about the supposed conflict of interest. The newspaper successfully nitpicks rental-car and airport transportation costs—but the judge must have travelled coach, because there’s no complaint about his airplane tickets. One can question the political savvy of a judge who doesn’t realize that his expense account reports are going to be scrutinized. One can also complain that the money comes from civil district court filing fees, but, at the end of the day, money is fungible and it doesn’t really matter what pot the money comes from. It would probably be more efficient to end travel reimbursements and just raise salaries—but because of tax implications, maybe not.
Louisiana state judges make less than first-year associates in private law firms, and I’m not about to complain that a judge was a little generous with himself in taking advantage of available and legal perks to the tune of a few thousand dollars. There appears to already exist a check in the system, in that this judge’s request for a week-long educational trip to Italy was rejected.
Or am I so overly jaded by plaintiffs’ bar abuses in the billions that I should be more appalled? Feel free to comment in the comment section, but be polite and on-topic.
5 Comments
Judges need changes of pace; these cost money. You are correct that whether the money comes from a salary not as high as a first-year associate’s at a mega law firm or from some sort of allowance–a travel allowance for instance–is not so important. Many very fine judges lead lonely professional lives: they fear they ought not talk law with lawyers because they will be thought to have become biased.
Many very fine judges lead lonely professional lives: they fear they ought not talk law with lawyers because they will be thought to have become biased.
That’s a sad loss. A judge ought to be able to discuss law with peers, whether they be judges or lawyers, to help hone their skills and ways of interpreting the law. Merely keeping current on all published material isn’t sufficient. I’m not a lawyer, but I find that I get far more out of material if it’s interactive instead of one-sided.
“$4,400 in taxpayer money was spent to teach a course in Colorado,”
Wasn’t it nice for LA citizens to pay the judge to teach a course in CO?
Betcha CO also paid him to come teach it, as welll as his travel costs don’t ya think?
[Actually, as the cited newspaper article indicates, it was a meeting of Louisiana attorneys in Colorado. — T.F.]
That sounds like pretty high travel expenses (assuming these aren’t circuit-riding judges), but to put it in perspective: If the classes Judge Medley conducts for LA defense lawyers at their annual get-together in CO prevents just one retrial for ineffective assistance of counsel, that will save enough to cover Medley’s travels for years.
A fair contrarian point to what the journalism likely presumes is good watch-dogging. It’s funny – young journos are trained to think that individual expenditures by politicians or judges from taxpayer-supported accounts are such salacious material, but I think it has more to do with the ease of reporting it than actual scandal value. One FOIA and you have the info – a very simple and amoeba-like story. It’s like print journalism’s version of TV news blaring, “What’s in your fridge could kill you! Details at 10.”
But when judges are being “educated” about issues of the day on long junkets by various interest groups (sometimes the defense does this), that’s worthy of note.