I recently posted about the Mississippi Supreme Court’s Order preventing Governor Barbour from cutting the judiciary’s budget. Looks like Mississippi is not the only state with these types of issues. As reported yesterday on the WSJ Law Blog, the New York Court of Appeals rendered a decision on the related issue of judicial pay:

In a 5-to-1 decision, the Court of Appeals found that the legislative and executive branches illegally pegged judges’ pay raises to unrelated legislation. As such, the actions violated the separation of powers doctrine under the New York state constitution. Click here for the NYT article; here for the opinion.

Mississippi state court judges are underpaid at every level of the judiciary. But with the state in a budget crisis, it will be hard for judges to get a needed pay raise and any raises will probably not be to needed levels. It will be interesting to see whether at some point the judiciary tries to order their own raises.