I dream of a day when the legal academy spends as much attention to congressional and other legislative reform, than they spend debating whom among us is properly critical of the Supreme Court. Reforming Congress is equally (or more) important than rethinking Supreme Court practice and authority.
I wrote a paper about this in 2010, for the Richmond Journal of Law and Public Interest. Basically, low-paying, part-time legislatures serve to enshrine conflicts of interest as a best practice. We should raise pay by 10x.
Maggie Blackhawk
Virginia is not a state saddled with a reputation of ethically challenged legislators, but our part-time citizen legislature is structurally conducive to conflicts of interest. This reality was brough...
The fact that if I ran for local office and won, I would have to take a pay cut to manage a $1.3 billion budget and make decisions that directly impact the well-being of half a million people is kind of insane.
Unpopular but true: we under-pay our often disappointing politicians.
Kevin Wilson
Municipalities in Ontario have robust processes in place for ensuring that recommended pay increases for councils come from neutral entities to avoid conflicts of interest. Locally, these increases are simply aligning to midpoints in comparator groups. This is lazy populism.
Columnist Luisa D’Amato questions whether some municipal politicians have learned anything from the public outcry in 2022, when regional councillors voted themselves free lifetime health benefits.
