The roll call of causes dealt with by the judiciary sounds like a litany of the most vexing questions in current American political history: racial discrimination and segregation, school admissions and affirmative action, busing, free speech and political protest, internal and foreign security, the rights of criminal defendants, church-state relations from prayers in public schools to public funding for parochial schools, legislative reapportionment, obscenity, the draft, abortion, the death penalty, women’s rights, and ecology.  Moreover, the complex subject matter of modern statutes and Congress’s tendency to legislate by exhortatory generality have propelled the courts into what may appear to be an unaccustomed regulatory and quasi-legislative role.  Both the pettiest details and the broadest concepts of government have come within the judicial ambit.  Ideally, the modern judge should be, in the phrase describing Justice Brandeis, a master of both microscope and telescope.

[H]ad I remained [a state] Appellate Court Judge, I could have retired a year and one-half ago, upon reaching age 60, at a pension only 15% less than our present federal salary with an automatic 3% increase per year.  And there is no comparison in the state judiciary to the complexity of cases in the federal system.

Most of us entered the judiciary in mid-life anticipating a career in judicial service.  Most of us also expected that there would be a coherent system for raises that could serve as the basis for some financial planning.  The system we encountered was just the opposite.  There was absolutely no way of knowing from year to year whether we would get a raise.  In fact, in many years we did not.  This financial uncertainty, the inability to anticipate even a cost of living increase, was demeaning and disruptive.
Judge Carroll did resign and became the Dean of the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.

We expect our judges to have superior intellectual ability, to be learned in the law and to know and evenhandedly apply the principles of equity.  We demand that they reason carefully and fully and articulate fluently and in writing the bases for their decisions.  We require that they be patient and courteous and accord to every lawyer and litigant the respect and dignity to which each is entitled, and even beyond, so that we the people respect our judiciary and trust it to dispense true and equal justice.  In order to insure that our judges remain faithful to their impartial role, we have prevented them from supplementing their income in any way other than by passive investment or by writing or speaking on subjects that will promote a better understanding of the judicial system and the legal profession.  And yet, their compensation is simply not comparable to what people of their stature and with their responsibility would earn in the private sector.  Clearly our expectations and demands are out of balance with the remuneration we offer.  Drastic positive adjustment is necessary in order that our demands and expectations can continue to be realized for the benefit of ourselves as a nation governed by the rule of law.
 

   I believe a great debt of thanks is owed to those men and women who now serve in the federal judiciary, for the sacrifices they are making are wholly unselfish and benefit others to the judges’ personal financial disadvantage.  Still, it is wrong for our nation to exact such a steep price for public service.  Rather than a reward for selflessness, we are imposing a penalty, and it is becoming detrimental to the system.

In the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.  And we can never hope to see realized in practice the complete separation of the Judicial from the Legislative power, in any system, which leaves the former dependent of pecuniary resource on the occasional grants of the latter.