In terms of performance evaluation, that is something that is done for administrative tribunals--in other words, people working [Inaudible--Editor], and it is an accepted practice. It is also an accepted practice in the United States.
For judges, I believe that some felt--and that may be a myth--that even chief justices should not be evaluating performance, although some chief justices do monitor the work performed by judges and the distribution of work.
You are right to mention that litigants do realize in some cases that judges have it easy. That may be the fault of the system. A judge was telling me this summer that he was supposed to be in a rural district for one week, but that the case was resolved in half a day. So, for the rest of the week, he visited the area. Of course, that is really a problem of work distribution among judges. That judge had probably earned his salary for that week. So, that cannot be an argument. In my opinion, most judges work hard, particularly appeal court judges and judges that preside over important and complex cases.
In my profession, as a law professor, we examine court rulings, both the ones that are published and those that are put on the Internet. We have noticed that some judges write relatively short opinions, or may even write relatively few of them. Now the time allocated for deliberations and for writing a judgment may be too long, and thus there are probably judges who have a pretty easy time of it.
However, that is not a valid argument for not keeping judges compensation at a reasonable level--I believe I said “reasonably high” in my brief--in a democratic society such as ours.