Biden outpaces Trump and Obama with 97 federal judicial nominees by end of second year
Kaelan Deese
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President Joe Biden has outpaced two of his predecessors with the confirmation of 97 judges by the end of his second year in office, with it achieving the most diverse nominees in history.
Biden’s pace for confirming judges beats out former President Donald Trump‘s total of 85 and former President Barack Obama‘s 62 appointments by Dec. 29 of their respective second years in office. Biden’s record is just shy of former President George W. Bush‘s 100 appointments and falls behind former President Bill Clinton‘s 128 appointments by roughly the same time frame.
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Out of Biden’s 97 confirmations, 28 of them are appellate court judges and 68 district court judges, along with one Supreme Court appointment to succeed retired Justice Stephen Breyer, a Clinton appointee.
The administration’s goal to nominate diverse candidates is by far one of the highest achievements of Biden’s legacy. Three-quarters of his confirmations are women and nearly half of the appointees, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman on the high court, are women of color.
Only five of Biden’s appellate and district court judges are white men, comprising just 5% of the confirmations so far. By comparison, 147 or 64% of Trump’s nominees were white men.
Biden’s picks also have a striking career diversity compared to the nominees of his predecessors, as nearly a third of his selections have experience as former civil rights lawyers and public defenders.
The president’s progress is far from over after the new Congress begins next month. While the Republicans narrowly took over the House after the November election, Democrats will enjoy a sturdy 51-49 majority that will help him create inroads against Trump’s gains on the appellate court level.
While Biden lacks any serious shot at erasing Trump and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) legacy of installing the 6-3 conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, he stands a better chance at reshaping the appellate courts.
When Trump left office, he re-shifted the balance of power on the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 11th, 2nd, and 3rd Circuits to a Republican-appointed majority. Under Biden’s lead, the 2nd Circuit has moved back to a slight lead for Democratic appointees.
But Biden’s biggest obstacle is the lack of vacancies on federal courts, as there are only nine on circuit courts currently, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
“Unless he wants to give up on appointing a lot of judges, he’s going to have to start appointing to vacancies in red and purple states,” Russell Wheeler, a governance studies expert at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Examiner earlier this month.
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“They’re gonna have to make a choice whether to get down to brass tacks and argue and debate with them, negotiate with these Republican senators or give up filling those vacancies,” Wheeler said, referring to the “blue slip” procedures of inviting senators from the state of residence of a federal judicial nominee to offer an opinion on a presidential selection.
That means Biden and his Democratic colleagues could be heading into “contentious” arguments with home state Senators, Wheeler said, adding, “they’ve pretty well avoided that up to now.”