Renting Justice: Retired Judges Seize Rising Role in Settling Disputes in California --- Many Jurists Strive to Get Right Experience, Leave Early to Raise Earnings --- But Will the Courts Suffer?
When Armand Arabian stepped down as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court earlier this year, many fellow judges were taken aback.</br></br>Oversize ads in legal newspapers carried his picture and trumpeted that the "Arabian Knight" would now work as a mediator and arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association. In interviews, he bragged about having a special telephone number to receive an onslaught of calls. "If you want justice in the southland of Los Angeles, you wire 213-ARABIAN and you got me," he declared.</br></br>In the staid judicial world, many decried what they saw as an affront to the dignity of the bench. They were also astonished by reports of the lucrative deal the retired justice had cut with the AAA, the nation's oldest provider of private justice.</br></br>But the marketing of 61-year-old Justice Arabian ratcheted up what has become an intense battle among the AAA and its rivals to snag judges and the money they generate. "We're in the merchandise business," says Milton Adler, secretary-treasurer of Judicate of Philadelphia, an East Coast competitor. "Judges are like our inventory."</br></br>Though retired judges around the country now resolve legal battles out of court, nowhere is the competition for them as intense as in California, where the practice took hold 17 years ago and has become more and more widespread. Cutbacks in court funding in recent years and the state's "three-strikes" sentencing law have created long waits for civil trials and unprecedented demand for court alternatives, especially mediation. "I call it the Full Employment Act for Retired Judges," Justice Arabian says.