The Unorthodox Presidency of Donald J. Trump by Paul Rutledge & Chapman Rackaway

Author:Paul Rutledge & Chapman Rackaway [Paul E. Rutledge & Chapman Rackaway]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2021-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

FILLING THE FEDERAL BENCH

In late December 2019, a Washington Post article stated, “After three years in office, President Trump has remade the federal judiciary, ensuring a conservative tilt for decades and cementing his legacy no matter the outcome of November’s election” (Itkowitz 2019). Five days later, conservative Post columnist Marc Thiessen listed “The 10 Best Things Trump Did in 2019,” with first place reading: “He has continued to appoint conservative judges at a record pace” (Thiessen 2019). Even those on the left have had to recognize the president’s success in this area, with one writing, “Trump hasn’t simply given lots of lifetime appointments to lots of lawyers. He’s filled the bench with some of the smartest, and some of the most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement. Long after Trump leaves office, these judges will shape American law—pushing it further and further to the right even if the voters soundly reject Trumpism in 2020” (Millhiser 2019).

The president has been justly proud of his administration’s attempt to turn the judiciary to the right, even if some of his statements have not been entirely accurate. At a rally at a Hispanic Miami mega-church on January 3, 2020, Trump spent several minutes touting his views about, and successes in, appointing “187 unbelievably talented brilliant young judges. They’ll be there for 40 years some of them.” Trump felt that, as president, “the most important thing you have to do is judges and Supreme Court Justices,” and the primary reason for his success was that he had inherited “142 slots. It never happened before. The most anyone’s ever had is like one. Maybe none. You never, that’s like gold. That’s why it’s so important. You have 142. I said ‘how many slots do I have?’ They said, ‘sir, you have 142.’ It’s never happened before. That’s why we’re setting all these records. Nobody’s ever done this. Because of President Obama. I don’t know what happened. But I had 142” (C-SPAN 2020).

While the president has consistently claimed that he inherited 142 judicial vacancies, in reality, he had inherited only 104: one on the US Supreme Court, seventeen on the US courts of appeals, and eighty-six on the US district courts. In addition, while this was a substantial number, the president’s assertion that such was a record, and that his predecessors had never had any more than “like one,” is far from true. As seen in table 9.1, every president since Jimmy Carter has left at least thirty-five vacancies on the federal courts. The record for vacancies at the end of a presidency is not Barack Obama’s 104, but, rather, the slightly higher 107 left in 1993 by George H. W. Bush.2 In addition, Bill Clinton left nine more vacancies on the important US courts of appeals than did Barack Obama.

Table 9.1: Judicial Vacancies at the End of Presidential Administrations

President Supreme Court Courts of Appeals District Courts Total

Obama 1 17 86 104

GW Bush 0 13 40 53

Clinton 0 26 54 80

GHW

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