Can a judicial officer be paid for his services?

The judicial process is not ordinarily administered by persons chosen by the parties and paid a fee for the service, but by public officials chosen by a process in which the public participates, whose compensation is at levels that are fixed by law and cannot be affected by their rulings. (See Tumey v. Ohio (1927) 273 U.S. 510.) Their job is not to maximize the ends of private parties, nor simply to secure the peace, but to apply the law; and their decisions are almost invariably subject to review for faithfulness to the facts and the mandates of applicable statutes and constitutional principles.¹⁵ Because judicial officers cannot accept a fee for their services, they have no economic interest in potential customers' response to their decisions.