CHIEF JUSTICE SCOLDS CONGRESS OVER JUDICIAL PAY STAGNATION.

Byline: Linda Greenhouse The New York Times

Making Congress the focus of his annual report on the state of the federal judiciary, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on Tuesday criticized the legislators for failing to raise judges' pay, saying the issue threatened to affect the morale and quality of the federal judiciary.

At the same time, he praised Congress for placing new limits on state prisoners' access to federal court in a 1996 law whose constitutionality the Supreme Court has yet to resolve fully.

The new federal law, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, contained ``valuable reforms that will improve the administration of justice,'' the chief justice said in a year-end report released by the court.

He cited provisions that restricted access by Death Row inmates and other state prisoners to federal court review of their convictions and sentences through habeas corpus petitions. The law, which took effect in April, is intended to make habeas corpus petitions less repetitious and easier for federal courts to handle with dispatch.

In his capacity as head of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the top policy-making body for the federal courts, Rehnquist has long supported changes of the kind Congress made in the handling of habeas corpus petitions, including limiting prisoners essentially to one promptly filed petition and restricting federal court review if a state court had already considered a particular issue in the inmate's case.

On judicial pay, the chief justice said the federal judiciary was not seeking an increase in base pay, which now ranges from $133,600 a year for a U.S. District judge to $171,500 for the chief justice. Associate justices of the Supreme Court earn $164,100.

Rather, the chief justice's complaint was that federal judges have not received the cost-of-living adjustments that other federal government employees have received since 1993, the last time Congress raised federal judges' salaries. He said failure to get a cost-of-living increase has cost each judge thousands of dollars over the last four years and put judges' earnings ever further behind those of the lawyers who practice before them.

``Clearly, this disparity between the salaries of the judicial and legal professions cannot continue indefinitely without compromising the morale of the Federal judiciary and eventually its quality,'' Rehnquist said.

Beginning in 1989, when Congress tied judicial pay to its own salaries, automatic cost-of-living increases for federal judges were eliminated. Any increase now requires express congressional approval, which has not been forthcoming, either for the judges or for members of Congress.

``I recognize that some members of Congress have said that they should not receive any cost-of-living adjustment until the federal budget is balanced,'' the chief justice said.

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Photo: William H. Rehnquist

Issues report on federal bench