A MAGA Court of Appeals

The Economist: “The 6-3 conservative majority on America’s highest court, forged by the three justices Mr Trump appointed between 2017 and 2020, is only part of the story. The 45th president seated 27% of all active judges on federal district courts—the 94 trial courts that dot America. He also replaced 30% of judges on America’s 13 circuit courts of appeal. Unlike the Supreme Court, which picks its cases (and in recent years has heard just 60 or so per term), circuit courts are obliged to review, with few exceptions, district-court decisions that the losing party seeks to appeal. These cases number in the tens of thousands annually.”

“Since only a tiny fraction of circuit-court decisions reach the Supreme Court, the mid-level players in America’s judiciary exercise tremendous power. Often three-judge appellate panels have the final word in the region of the country where they have jurisdiction. By managing to invert the ideological make-up of several circuit courts—including the previously liberal-dominated Ninth Circuit, which covers California and eight other western states—Mr Trump pushed the law to the right in large swathes of America.”

“Nowhere is Mr Trump’s thumbprint on the judiciary deeper than in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the tribunal based in New Orleans that handles appeals from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Active Republican appointees outnumber their Democratic-tapped colleagues by 12 to four. Half of that supermajority was named by Mr Trump.”