As this ongoing political maelstrom continues to swirl and even pick up pace, discussions of changes to the federal judiciary have become less central to the daily news digest. That said, the federal courts still may be the central locus where much of Trump’s political drama plays out. The other day, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for instance, ruled that Trump could not block a subpoena for his tax returns. One of Trump’s appointees, Judge Neomi Rao, dissented from the court’s decision.
The impact of Trump’s nominees will be felt long after he leaves office. With life tenure on the courts, Trump’s federal court appointees will sit on the courts for decades to come, making decisions that affect the nation’s entire population. Irrespective of Trump’s future political trajectory, he has already seen 150 of his judicial nominees confirmed to either federal district, appeals, or to the Supreme Court (data on these judges was primarily derived through the FJC’s Biographical Directory of Federal Judges).
While all judicial nominations carry great importance, the ones that may have the largest effect on influencing the trajectory of the courts occur when a president appoints a judge to fill a seat previously held by a judge appointed by a president from the opposing party. This potentially allows the president to shift the median views held by judges on that court. Over one-third of Trump’s 150 appointees across the three court levels have filled seats from judges previously appointed by Democratic presidents.
This leads to the question of the extent of the changes Trump made to the federal judiciary. The answer is quite substantial and can be better ascertained on a circuit-by-circuit basis. The following chart features aggregate numbers from appeals and district court judicial appointments by each overall appeals circuit in the federal court system (courts with current majority Republican appointees have red bars and courts with current majority Democratic appointees have blue bars).
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Trump’s appointees constitute over 20 percent of eight appeals courts including the Supreme Court. His largest percentage increase across a circuit and its districts courts was to the Eleventh Circuit, which now include over 31 percent Trump judges. He made the second greatest impact to the Fifth Circuit and its district courts, appointing nearly 26 percent of the judges on these courts. With 27 appointments, he also made the most substantial absolute contribution to the Fifth Circuit. By contrast, Trump only added three judges to the First Circuit and four to the Second Circuit.
With over a year left in his presidential term, Trump should reach nearly 200 total federal judicial appointments. With many of these judges tipping the balance of the courts in favor of Republican-nominated judges, the transition in the types of the decisions these courts make are already noticeable. These changes will become even more apparent as time goes on. While there is no guarantee that any one of these judges will espouse hard line conservative principles, the sheer number of appointments to such a diverse range of federal courts does set an expectation that the courts will likely never be the same as they were before Trump achieved the office of president.