A Comment on the Relationship between Judicial Salary and Judicial Quality

Professor Scott Baker was kind enough to present his empirical research on the relationship between judicial salary and judicial quality1 to the Law and Economics Workshop run by Professor Keith Hylton2 and me last fall and I am honored to be able to comment on it today. It is part of a growing body of literature in law that tries to shed light on important issues through statistical analysis. Baker’s paper, even before its publication, generated a significant amount of buzz. As Baker points out and as is well-known, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has opined that low judicial pay threatens to undermine significantly the quality of the judicial system.3 This view, as Baker notes, has been “endorsed by prominent law school deans, the American Bar Association, and leading members of the corporate bar.”4 Baker’s statistical analysis casts doubt upon this thesis. In this Reply I will first review the economic arguments underlying the thesis that low salaries reduce the quality of the judiciary, as well as the countervailing arguments. I will then look at Scott Baker’s statistical analysis and try to determine if this analysis provides evidence as to whether salary affects the quality of the judiciary. I was impressed by the sophistication and creativity of the statistical analysis in the face of formidable evidentiary problems, e.g. how does one measure the effect of salary when all judges earn the same amount and how does one measure judicial quality. I will note my reservations about some of the assumptions underlying the statistical analysis and highlight certain things that I might have done differently. Nevertheless, Baker’s work is a heroic effort carried out competently and creatively. Whether it ultimately succeeds and overcomes the inherent evidentiary