Trump Passes Judicial Confirmation Goal

That brings the number of Trump appointees to three at district and appeals courts and two at the Supreme Court. Democrats have been taking notice of the conservative stamp Trump is putting on the federal judiciary. Here's Senator Amy Klobuchar at last week's PBS News Our political presidential debate. We have to immediately start putting judges on the bench to phil vacancies so that we can reverse the horrific nature of these Trump judges. Joining me as Carl Tobias, professor

at the University of Richmond's School of Law. So, Carl, has President Trump hit his three year target for judges or actually exceeded it? He has exceeded his target by appointing fifty appellate court judgesty three district court judges, and two Supreme Court justices. His target was one eighty and he's hit one eight five. You mentioned fifty circuit court judges, that's only five short of President Barack Obama's record in an eight year period. Tell us about the circuit courts

and which have been flipped. Well, President Trump has set all records for appellate confirmations at this juncture of a presidency. He's been appointed the most fifty. There's only one vacancy out of a hundred and seventy nine nationwide, which hasn't been the case since the last century. And he has been able to flip the Second Circuit, the Third Circuit, and the Eleventh Circuit, so they all of Republican appointed

judges in the majority on those courts. Have we seen a change from the more conservative judges at the appellate level? Have we seen a change in the decisions yet? I think it's pretty early to tell that. There have been a number of opinions written by those judges, of course, usually their concurrences or dissents, as opposed to say, the majority on a three judge panel. But we're beginning to see some of those cases where Trump judge makes the difference.

For example, in the case of the Fifth Circuit just decided on Obamacare, where the judge supplies the third vote that makes a majority. And so that's like it happen. And don't forget the legacy. People who are in their forties will be serving for three or four decades on the appellate courts and will see more and more opinions

coming from those judges over taught. So, now that he's filled virtually every vacancy in the appellate court system, Mitch McConnell has turned to the district court the trial court judges in the federal system. So what did he manage to do before the Senate adjourned for the break. Well, he was able to bring forward thirteen nominees and have cloture and confirmation votes on all thirteen for vacancies around

the country, which is a substantial number. And that has brought the number of district vacancies down to sixty seven, which is the fewest that there have been in the Trump administration, and it was as high as a hundred and fifty. And it also has brought down the emergency vacancies, which are the worst cases because of protracted vacancies and huge dockets. That number has gone from eighty six at

it's high to forty one. And so it's good in the sense of filling these vacancies, giving the courts the resources they need, especially in civil cases. The ideological bent of a district court judge is it as important as

the ideological bent of an appellate judge. No, it's not, in principally because the reach of a decision or an opinion out of a district court judge doesn't even bind his or her colleagues in the same courthouse, as opposed to the appellate level, where a decision, for example, out of the Second Circuit binds everyone in New York, Connecticut,

and Vermont. And so because of Supreme Court here, so few cases hunderd a year, that is the Supreme Court for people who live in those three states, and so those decisions are more critical to creating president in the regional circuits around the country. And so the Trump administration has focused like a laser on filling all of those vacancies. How is he able to do this so fast? Is he skipping over some of the debate who is vetting

all these candidates. Well, mostly they're being vetted by the White House and Justice Department, and sometimes that leads to insufficiently rigorous investigation, and sometimes in the Judiciary Committee there isn't as complete investigation or questioning with rigor of the nominees that some people would like to see. And nine of his nominees received not qualified ratings from the A B A and seven of those have been confirmed, three for the appellate courts, so there is some slippage there.

And all presidents except Trump and George W. Bush have honored and followed those A B A recommendations, going back to Eisenhower, and of course President Obama refused to nominate anyone who received a not qualified rating. You want to have the finest people on the appeals industry courts around the country. Thanks Carl. That's Carl Tobias, professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. Thanks for listening to

the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso. This is Bloomberg