8 ms·

The entire Federal Judiciary runs on a budget of about $8-$8.5 billion/year.[1] Think about that for a moment. One of the three co-equal branches of the US Gove

The entire Federal Judiciary runs on a budget of about $8-$8.5 billion/year.[1] Think about that for a moment. One of the three co-equal branches of the US Government, and guardian of the US Constitution, operates on a budget of less than 1% of the Department of Defense's budget ($1.15 trillion), 10% of the Department of Homeland Security's ($91.6 billion), and 20% of the Department of Justice's ($42.3 billion).[2] One of the reasons for PACER fees (and other court costs) is the Judiciary's attempt to have some financial autonomy from Congress, even though it clearly depends on Congress for almost all of its annual budget. As others have stated, you can get case law for free elsewhere. You do need to access PACER for docket material, however. But there's even a fee exemption for "indigents, pro bono attorneys, academic researchers, and non-profit organizations."[3] [1] https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/governance-judicial-conference/congressional-budget-request https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/governance-jud... [2] https://www.usaspending.gov/#/explorer/agency https://www.usaspending.gov/#/explorer/agency [3] https://pacer.uscourts.gov/pricing-how-pacer-fees-work https://pacer.uscourts.gov/pricing-how-pacer-fees-work

anonu 6y ago
I'm not sure that comparison is really apples to apples. How much does it cost to run Congress? The presidency? That may be more apt a comparison than the budget of one of the departments
GordonS 6y ago
I really don't think a comparison to the DoD's exorbitant budget is useful, as pretty much anything will be tiny by comparison. Granted I don't know exactly what is within their remit, but $8B is a fuck-tonne of money.
- adwi 6y ago
  ~ $25/citizen. Edit: For reference, the UK spends roughly $150 per capita. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098367/justice-spending-in-the-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098367/justice-spending...
  - azernik 6y ago
    On a judicial system that covers a lot more than the US Federal Judiciary. Most cases in the US are run by state judiciaries.
  - pradn 6y ago
    The UK doesn't have a federal form of government. The fair comparison would be to add in the cost of municipal and state-level courts.
    - wahern 6y ago
      California spends about $65/citizen.[1] $90/citizen seems to compare favorably to the U.K., at least in terms of outlays. It could also simply evidence that the U.S. judiciary is underfunded. I'm assuming the Ministry of Justice figure is exclusive of prisons. If the figure includes prisons, which cost ~$85/citizen in the U.K.[2] then court system expenditures would be greater in the U.S. (~$90) than the U.K. (~$65). [1] $2.5b over a population of 39 million. https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4097#:~:text=The%202019%2D20%20budget%20provides,19%20General%20Fund%20spending%20level https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4097#:~:text=The%2020.... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/298654/united-kingdom-uk-public-sector-expenditure-prisons/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/298654/united-kingdom-uk...
      - martinald 6y ago
        MoJ in the UK runs prisons, courts and probation service.
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      So what? You can be charged or sued directly in federal court.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  OK, how about this: the entire Federal judiciary runs on a budget about 20% less than the NYPD.
  - efitz 6y ago
    "This is bigger than that" or "this is smaller than that" are not particularly useful comparisons. I could use the same tactic to make the budget seem overblown. The budget for the US federal judiciary is bigger than the GDP of 64 countries[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
    - dralley 6y ago
      You neglect to mention that most of those countries are islands with a couple tens of thousands of residents. The population of NYC may well be 5x higher than the combined populations of all of those countries.
      - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
        That is exactly their point.
        emn13 6y ago
        The point is pretty incoherent then, because they're proving that indeed it's reasonable for the federal judiciary to have a larger budget and thus not demonstrating that comparing budgets leads to absurdity.
    - emn13 6y ago
      That's not a convincing argument, because it's pretty reasonable for a several orders of magnituge wealthier country to outspend a smaller economy on all kinds of stuff (including their entire GDP). Do you have a better example?
  - Spooky23 6y ago
- plazmatic 6y ago
  Found the military industrial complex shill. Easy find. What a loser.
missedthecue 6y ago
Your link says $625 billion for the DoD, which isn't a small sum, but it's not 1.15 trillion. How do you arrive at that figure?
- droidno9 6y ago
  Change the drop-down menu to FY 2019.
- thedufer 6y ago
  To clarify the sibling comment - the FY2020 number appears to be YTD, not for the full year.
User23 6y ago
> One of the three co-equal branches of the US Government, and guardian of the US Constitution This is incorrect on both counts. First, the branches are not co-equal by any stretch of the imagination. They are created in order of their intended level of power. The Article I branch, Congress, manifestly has far greater enumerated power than the other branches, including being the only branch with the ability to remove members of the other two branches. The dominant check on Congress's power is really Congress itself, although admittedly the other branches have some ability to curtail abuses of Congressional power. Even so, Congress can overrule both a veto and a finding that a law is unconstitutional. It can also pack the courts, and all kinds of other things. The Article II and II branches, Executive and Judicial respectively, have progressively fewer enumerated powers. As for the second point, the Constitution explicitly gives Congress and the States the sole power to amend the Constitution, but the Judiciary has arrogated that power to itself. That's not guarding the Constitution, it's mutilating it. Likewise, Congress has ceded much of its authority to the executive. Anyhow this is all moot because the reality is that how the US Federal Government is run has about as much to do with the Constitution as it does with Schoolhouse Rock[1]. Some of the trappings remain, but that's all. It's observably true that none of the branches is in any way a guardian of the Constitution. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag
- thathndude 6y ago
  The judiciary merely interprets what is written. It does not amend. Having said that, obviously, the interpretation often has the effect of amending. But if we’re going to be technical about things, that’s the reality.
  - User23 6y ago
    Observably false. The Judiciary decides what they want the Constitution to say, and then engages in whatever tortuous reasoning is required to get the desired "reading." The most well known example is when the Judiciary amended the Constitution to forbid the States from outlawing abortion, but there are plenty of others. So, to get technical, Judicial interpretation as it is now practiced is pragmatically equivalent to Congress and the States' amendment power. This is obviously much more than merely striking down an unconstitutional statute. But, as I said, the U.S. Federal Government just uses the Constitution as a fig leaf at this point. It would be nice if there were a good reference book on how the country is actually governed from an operational standpoint, including who actually writes bills, how junkets are used, the role of lobbying and blackmail, and so on. I don't imagine such a work will see the light of day until long after the end of this government, but it would be interesting.
stefan_ 6y ago
"Judiciary's attempt to have some financial autonomy" is a great way of putting "overcharging PACER users for a slush fund" to finance pet projects like camera surveillance.
- droidno9 6y ago
  What are you talking about?
russler23 6y ago
The judiciary’s fiscal dependence on the popularly elected bodies is by design and a necessary check on its power. More independent state organs habitually trend towards tyranny. In theory, a deeply unpopular, but principled stance may result in funding cuts, but will survive those; whereas an unprincipled power grab will run into a Congress ready to curtail it.
mmanfrin 6y ago
I want, as a taxpayer, to be paying the bill for government functions. Taxes are much easier to apply progressively against the citizenry than fees, which are regressive. Encouraging agencies to self fund is how you get asset seizures; ticket traps like Maricopa, CA; regulatory capture like the agency that oversaw oilrig safety before the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and many others. It leads to the worst form of monopolistic rent taking.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Not only that, it discourages the use of government services which the taxpayer has to pay the fixed costs of regardless. Suppose you have some litigious plaintiffs filing unmeritorious cases and then losing every case that goes to court but extracting settlements from defendants who do the math and realize it's cheaper to pay them off than to fight and win in court. If you dump a bunch of court fees and other costs on anyone who demands their day in court, more people settle (or the unmeritorous claims can extract higher settlements) and it makes the scam more profitable. Meanwhile the victims aren't a large enough voting block to get it changed on their own, and now the taxpayer isn't feeling the bite of the expense and the judges aren't feeling the wasted time in their courtrooms, even though the number and extent of people being victimized is larger. And it's the same thing for any of it. By the time the taxpayer is paying most of the cost of operating a subway line, better that usage not be discouraged through fares so that the line sees 90% utilization instead of 60%, because you're paying the fixed costs to run it either way. Which also makes it so you don't have to waste a lot of money on infrastructure to collect fares, which means that not only are you getting more for your money, the overall cost to the public ends up being lower if it's 100% taxes than if it's 80% taxes and 20% fares, because then half the fares aren't being wasted on fare collection. If the government is going to pay for something then it should pay for all of it or not at all.
- azernik 6y ago
  Note also that the rather extreme, even by American standards, racial disparities in Ferguson policing were driven by the city refusing to levy sufficient taxes, and funding itself instead on extractive fines and court fees (the latter not even requiring a proof of guilt, you'd be charged said fees just for being hauled in front of a judge).

anonu 6y ago

I'm not sure that comparison is really apples to apples. How much does it cost to run Congress? The presidency? That may be more apt a comparison than the budget of one of the departments

GordonS 6y ago

I really don't think a comparison to the DoD's exorbitant budget is useful, as pretty much anything will be tiny by comparison. Granted I don't know exactly what is within their remit, but $8B is a fuck-tonne of money.

adwi 6y ago
~ $25/citizen. Edit: For reference, the UK spends roughly $150 per capita. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098367/justice-spending-in-the-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098367/justice-spending...
- azernik 6y ago
  On a judicial system that covers a lot more than the US Federal Judiciary. Most cases in the US are run by state judiciaries.
- pradn 6y ago
  The UK doesn't have a federal form of government. The fair comparison would be to add in the cost of municipal and state-level courts.
  - wahern 6y ago
    California spends about $65/citizen.[1] $90/citizen seems to compare favorably to the U.K., at least in terms of outlays. It could also simply evidence that the U.S. judiciary is underfunded. I'm assuming the Ministry of Justice figure is exclusive of prisons. If the figure includes prisons, which cost ~$85/citizen in the U.K.[2] then court system expenditures would be greater in the U.S. (~$90) than the U.K. (~$65). [1] $2.5b over a population of 39 million. https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4097#:~:text=The%202019%2D20%20budget%20provides,19%20General%20Fund%20spending%20level https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4097#:~:text=The%2020.... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/298654/united-kingdom-uk-public-sector-expenditure-prisons/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/298654/united-kingdom-uk...
    - martinald 6y ago
      MoJ in the UK runs prisons, courts and probation service.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    So what? You can be charged or sued directly in federal court.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
OK, how about this: the entire Federal judiciary runs on a budget about 20% less than the NYPD.
- efitz 6y ago
  "This is bigger than that" or "this is smaller than that" are not particularly useful comparisons. I could use the same tactic to make the budget seem overblown. The budget for the US federal judiciary is bigger than the GDP of 64 countries[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
  - dralley 6y ago
    You neglect to mention that most of those countries are islands with a couple tens of thousands of residents. The population of NYC may well be 5x higher than the combined populations of all of those countries.
    - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
      That is exactly their point.
      - emn13 6y ago
        The point is pretty incoherent then, because they're proving that indeed it's reasonable for the federal judiciary to have a larger budget and thus not demonstrating that comparing budgets leads to absurdity.
  - emn13 6y ago
    That's not a convincing argument, because it's pretty reasonable for a several orders of magnituge wealthier country to outspend a smaller economy on all kinds of stuff (including their entire GDP). Do you have a better example?
- Spooky23 6y ago
plazmatic 6y ago
Found the military industrial complex shill. Easy find. What a loser.

missedthecue 6y ago

Your link says $625 billion for the DoD, which isn't a small sum, but it's not 1.15 trillion. How do you arrive at that figure?

droidno9 6y ago
Change the drop-down menu to FY 2019.
thedufer 6y ago
To clarify the sibling comment - the FY2020 number appears to be YTD, not for the full year.

User23 6y ago

> One of the three co-equal branches of the US Government, and guardian of the US Constitution This is incorrect on both counts. First, the branches are not co-equal by any stretch of the imagination. They are created in order of their intended level of power. The Article I branch, Congress, manifestly has far greater enumerated power than the other branches, including being the only branch with the ability to remove members of the other two branches. The dominant check on Congress's power is really Congress itself, although admittedly the other branches have some ability to curtail abuses of Congressional power. Even so, Congress can overrule both a veto and a finding that a law is unconstitutional. It can also pack the courts, and all kinds of other things. The Article II and II branches, Executive and Judicial respectively, have progressively fewer enumerated powers. As for the second point, the Constitution explicitly gives Congress and the States the sole power to amend the Constitution, but the Judiciary has arrogated that power to itself. That's not guarding the Constitution, it's mutilating it. Likewise, Congress has ceded much of its authority to the executive. Anyhow this is all moot because the reality is that how the US Federal Government is run has about as much to do with the Constitution as it does with Schoolhouse Rock[1]. Some of the trappings remain, but that's all. It's observably true that none of the branches is in any way a guardian of the Constitution. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag

thathndude 6y ago
The judiciary merely interprets what is written. It does not amend. Having said that, obviously, the interpretation often has the effect of amending. But if we’re going to be technical about things, that’s the reality.
- User23 6y ago
  Observably false. The Judiciary decides what they want the Constitution to say, and then engages in whatever tortuous reasoning is required to get the desired "reading." The most well known example is when the Judiciary amended the Constitution to forbid the States from outlawing abortion, but there are plenty of others. So, to get technical, Judicial interpretation as it is now practiced is pragmatically equivalent to Congress and the States' amendment power. This is obviously much more than merely striking down an unconstitutional statute. But, as I said, the U.S. Federal Government just uses the Constitution as a fig leaf at this point. It would be nice if there were a good reference book on how the country is actually governed from an operational standpoint, including who actually writes bills, how junkets are used, the role of lobbying and blackmail, and so on. I don't imagine such a work will see the light of day until long after the end of this government, but it would be interesting.

stefan_ 6y ago

"Judiciary's attempt to have some financial autonomy" is a great way of putting "overcharging PACER users for a slush fund" to finance pet projects like camera surveillance.

droidno9 6y ago
What are you talking about?

russler23 6y ago

The judiciary’s fiscal dependence on the popularly elected bodies is by design and a necessary check on its power. More independent state organs habitually trend towards tyranny. In theory, a deeply unpopular, but principled stance may result in funding cuts, but will survive those; whereas an unprincipled power grab will run into a Congress ready to curtail it.

mmanfrin 6y ago

I want, as a taxpayer, to be paying the bill for government functions. Taxes are much easier to apply progressively against the citizenry than fees, which are regressive. Encouraging agencies to self fund is how you get asset seizures; ticket traps like Maricopa, CA; regulatory capture like the agency that oversaw oilrig safety before the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and many others. It leads to the worst form of monopolistic rent taking.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Not only that, it discourages the use of government services which the taxpayer has to pay the fixed costs of regardless. Suppose you have some litigious plaintiffs filing unmeritorious cases and then losing every case that goes to court but extracting settlements from defendants who do the math and realize it's cheaper to pay them off than to fight and win in court. If you dump a bunch of court fees and other costs on anyone who demands their day in court, more people settle (or the unmeritorous claims can extract higher settlements) and it makes the scam more profitable. Meanwhile the victims aren't a large enough voting block to get it changed on their own, and now the taxpayer isn't feeling the bite of the expense and the judges aren't feeling the wasted time in their courtrooms, even though the number and extent of people being victimized is larger. And it's the same thing for any of it. By the time the taxpayer is paying most of the cost of operating a subway line, better that usage not be discouraged through fares so that the line sees 90% utilization instead of 60%, because you're paying the fixed costs to run it either way. Which also makes it so you don't have to waste a lot of money on infrastructure to collect fares, which means that not only are you getting more for your money, the overall cost to the public ends up being lower if it's 100% taxes than if it's 80% taxes and 20% fares, because then half the fares aren't being wasted on fare collection. If the government is going to pay for something then it should pay for all of it or not at all.
azernik 6y ago
Note also that the rather extreme, even by American standards, racial disparities in Ferguson policing were driven by the city refusing to levy sufficient taxes, and funding itself instead on extractive fines and court fees (the latter not even requiring a proof of guilt, you'd be charged said fees just for being hauled in front of a judge).