A growing number of federal judges have announced their departure in the weeks since President Biden
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Donald Trump Dominion Spokesman: Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow ‘begs to be charged’ DC officers defending Capitol, Sicknick’s family honored at Super Bowl US will rejoin UN Human Rights Council: MORE reportthe success of filling the judiciary with conservative judges.
Currently, there are 57 vacancies in the federal district and the courts of appeal and an additional 20 seats will become available in the coming months. At least 25 of those job openings were announced following Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
The departure group also includes Emmet Sullivan, who was appointed to the US District Court for the District of Columbia by former President Clinton in 1994. the former White House national security adviser had lied to the FBI about his talks with a Russian diplomat during Trump’s transition period.
Another Clinton-appointed judge, Robert Katzmann of the influential 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, announced on Jan. 21 that he was leaving his seat. Katzmann was also involved in a number of Trump-related cases. Last year, he was part of a panel of three judges that sided with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in a lawsuit that Trump filed to block the prosecutor’s subpoena for his tax returns.
Both Katzmann and Sullivan will assume a higher status, allowing them to remain as judges with a lighter suitcase load, while leaving seats to Biden to fulfill the Senate confirmation process.
“I think right now he has an incredible opportunity to improve the cause of justice, that he has a great opportunity to make his mark by joining the bench with remarkable lawyers who are both demographically and professionally diverse and with a demonstrated commitment to equal justice in this country, ”said Daniel Goldberg, legal director of the progressive group Alliance for Justice.
But despite the wave of newly vacated seats, Biden will face an uphill battle to match Trump’s success on the court, in part because he inherits significantly fewer job openings than his predecessor and has to navigate the delicate balance of a 50-50 Senate.
It’s not uncommon for federal judges to time their departure with the change of administration to ensure their replacement is elected by a president who chooses someone ideologically similar. But Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution scholar who studies the judiciary, said he believes the number of job openings that have arisen in the closing months of Trump’s administration and Biden’s early days is relatively low.
“I was surprised by the number of judges, including Republican appointees, who did not have a higher status compared to previous years,” said Wheeler. “In the twilight of the Obama administration and the twilight of the Bush administration, you usually see people rushing to the exits as soon as it is pretty clear what the presidential outcome will be, or, in the case of the Republicans. , try senior status in hopes that the Republican president can appoint their successor. “
According to Wheeler data, Trump is one of the most prolific presidents in modern times when it comes to court confirmations, filling federal banks at a rapid pace with young conservative judges.
According to the Pew Research Center, Trump has successfully appointed 226 judges to federal court in four years, including three Supreme Court justices, 54 appeals court judges and 174 district court judges.
Wheeler has discovered that Trump is only lagging behind former President Carter in terms of the total number of judicial appointments in the first four years of a recent president. President Reagan, who has appointed four Supreme Court justices in eight years, is the only recent president to have left a bigger footprint on the Supreme Court.
Wheeler thinks it will be more difficult for Biden to match Trump’s success in shaping the judiciary. First, he says, Biden gets less high-profile vacancies.
When Trump took office in January 2017, there were 17 empty seats in the country’s powerful courts of appeal, which sit just below the Supreme Court. There are now seven current and future circuit court vacancies that Biden will be able to fill, not including the DC Circuit seat opening as Merrick Garland
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Wheeler also noted that Trump and Senate Republicans made court confirmations one of their top priorities, which Biden and his colleagues in the upper house may not be able to repeat given the new administration’s ambitious legislative agenda.
“I wouldn’t expect the courts to revolutionize after four years, and if the Republicans take back the Senate in 2022, it will of course only get worse,” Wheeler said.
But progressives urging the new government to focus on the judiciary argue that the fate of Biden’s policy plans will largely depend on the judges hearing the legal challenges that are sure to follow.
“The progression of so many of the policy issues will not matter if there are no judges in the federal bank to properly enforce the critical legislation,” Goldberg said. “And whatever legislation is passed, be it civil rights law or legislation that protects workers, we need federal judges, the back end, who will ensure that those statutes are properly enforced and enforced as intended by Congress.”
To that end, Goldberg said, Senate Democrats appear to be taking the judiciary more seriously than in recent years.
“Clearly they are willing to prioritize this issue as never before,” he said.