Deep Dive #1: All the Presidents' Judges
Perhaps the most (or at least one of the most) important duties of the president is judicial appointments. They are one of the presidents’ most lasting legacies as well since federal judicial appointments are for life. Presidents have been unabashed about describing this importance in the past. President Trump said,
America’s President will choose hundreds of federal judges, and, in all likelihood, one, two, three, and even four Supreme Court justices. The outcome of these decisions will determine whether we hold fast to our nation’s founding principles or whether they are lost forever.
In his remarks given announcing the nomination of Justice Jackson to the Supreme Court, President Biden said,
For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America. And I believe it’s time that we have a Court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications and that we inspire all young people to believe that they can one day serve their country at the highest level.
Presidents from both major parties recognize this importance which goes back hundreds of years. With roots in the Constitution, presidents have engaged in picking judges for multiple court levels over time, thereby shaping and reshaping the judiciary in varying degrees.
Predating the Constitution, Federalist Paper #78 drafted by Alexander Hamilton gives insight into the purpose of these appointments. Do Hamilton’s words still ring true? In one section he wrote,
The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.
Power has clearly shifted towards the judiciary in the more than two centuries since the nation’s inception. Shortly before that section in Paper #78, Hamilton wrote,
Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.
The continued veracity of this claim is doubtful, although open for debate.
The remainder of this post compares data on judicial appointments since George W. Bush took power in 2000. The comparisons are between W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. The post gives a sense of the landscape without much editorialization over the choices these presidents made with their selections.
Appointments by Court
Presidents appoint judges to multiple levels of the federal judiciary. The data in this post tracks appointments to Article III federal district and appeals courts as well as the United States Supreme Court. Below are the courts where the presidents made the greatest impact in terms of appointments to district courts
Obama appointed at least seven judges to the most district courts with eight, followed by W. Bush and Biden with six, and Trump with one.
Appointments to the appeals courts look a bit different though.
While the indications above are that Trump did not reshape the district courts to the same degree as the other presidents, Trump arguably had the greatest influence on federal courts of appeal in his single term as president. Trump overhauled the notoriously left leaning Ninth Circuit with ten non-elevated appointments (non-elevated means these judges did not hold a post of district court judge prior to their appeals court appointment).
Law Schools
Where did these judges study? The loci of federal judges’ educations is often interesting for a number of reasons. Pedagogical philosophies often differ at different institutions. Some institutions are perceived as more elite than others, often creating an image of certain schools becoming more of a funnel to elite positions like those of federal judges.
The following looks at the most frequent law schools of each president’s appointments.
All of these presidents aside from those of George W. Bush appointed the most of their judges from Harvard and Yale Law. University of Texas School of Law is on some of the presidents’ lists but not others. Some schools that appear on only one of the president’s lists are UCLA Law, UC Berkeley Law, Stanford Law, Cornell Law, University of Chicago Law, and University of Alabama Law.
When we look at the list of judges’ schools clustered by party of appointing president we get a little bit of a deeper look at the schools.
The variation of schools is more evident when we cluster this way. For those interested in the ideological variation between judges, it is interesting to observe the differences in these lists by party. Two schools highlight this. UC Berkeley Law, a traditionally more progressive institution falls to the middle of the Democrat’s list of schools while Notre Dame Law, an institution associated with a more conservative outlook is in the middle of the Republican’s list of schools but doesn’t make it onto the Democrat’s list.
Demographics
Each president has a different philosophy about the importance of diversity in appointments. Some see diversity as an inherent good while others instead focus on candidate qualifications without regard to the importance of diversity factors including demographics, socio-economics, and geographic points of origin. Here is how the numbers break down along a couple of dimensions.
These numbers correlate with the traditional account of Democrats with more balanced appointments along these lines while Republicans’ appointments are more male dominated.
There is a similar balance with racial/ethnic demographics as the Democratic presidents have a more even balance although there are even clear differences between Obama and Biden.
Some notes on Biden’s Judges
The following two figures break down Biden’s judicial appointments along two dimensions. The first looks at where his appeals court appointees worked in private practice prior to their appointments. The second looks at Biden’s judges’ work as clerks before they were appointed to the federal judiciary. This treats clerkships broadly so it is intensive of quite a bit of data.
* Much of the data on federal judges was derived from the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges from the FJC.
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Here are some of my previous Empirical SCOTUS posts looking at presidential appointments: