By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON -- President Biden left his mark on the federal judiciary by installing a large number of appointees from diverse backgrounds, but he made few inroads on changing the ideological balance of courts that Donald Trump made more conservative during his first term.

Now, Trump's return to office could ensure that the federal courts lean solidly in a conservative direction for years to come.

In terms of raw confirmation numbers, Biden edged Trump's first term by a nose, appointing 235 judges to Trump's 234. But the Democrat had the opportunity to appoint just one Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and he installed nine fewer judges than Trump to the powerful U.S. courts of appeals, which sit one level below the high court.

Many of Biden's appointees to those courts succeeded other like-minded judges, meaning that the overall ideological dynamics didn't change much.

Where Biden made a lasting impact, however, was in appointing judges that represent a broader swath of America. About 60% of the judges he installed were people of color, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. And more than 60% were women.

Biden noted in December that he appointed more Black women to the courts of appeals than all other previous administrations combined. He also appointed the first openly LGBTQ woman to the appeals courts, as well as the first Muslim-American to a life-tenured judicial post.

Another Biden priority was selecting nominees with a broader array of professional experience, including by appointing former federal public defenders to a judiciary that has been disproportionately represented by former prosecutors.

That focus resulted in a new batch of judges who are distinctly different "in terms of the types of clients they've represented and the cases they have been exposed to," said retired federal judge Jeremy Fogel, who now directs the Berkeley Judicial Institute, a center at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

George Washington University law professor J.P. Collins said Biden "was wildly successful in diversifying the federal bench by any number of metrics: gender, race, sexual orientation, professional experience and more."

But because Biden had limited opportunities to fill the most pivotal seats in the judiciary, "it's Trump's judges that will continue to wield more power and influence in the years ahead," Collins said.

At a time when most prominent federal initiatives face hard-fought litigation, the courts can play a major role in the successes or failures of any administration. The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, for example blocked Biden's sweeping student-loan forgiveness plan, as well as some of his environmental regulations. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers three southern states and has six Trump appointees, also has been a go-to venue for conservative-led lawsuits to Biden policies.

The San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit is likely to see many left-leaning challenges to coming Trump administration policies, but that traditionally liberal court has drawn closer to ideological parity. Trump appointed 10 judges to that court; Biden has appointed eight.

The Senate confirmation process for judges continues to see constant partisan disputes, including during the final weeks of the Biden presidency.

After Trump's election victory, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said he would use the lame-duck period to confirm as many additional Biden judicial nominees as possible, but Republicans employed various Senate rules to stall that process, forcing procedural votes and late-night sessions.

The two sides reached a compromise deal in which Democrats agreed to give up on confirming four remaining appeals court nominees in exchange for Republicans removing road blocks on nominees for the U.S. district courts, the trial-level courts in the federal system.

One appellate judge, James Wynn Jr., an Obama appointee on the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., threw a wrench in that agreement by backing out of his planned retirement. The move, which prompted ire from Senate Republicans, means Trump will have one less seat to fill on an important court.

Two other federal judges similarly reversed their retirement plans after Trump won: U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn, an Obama appointee in North Carolina, and U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley, a Clinton appointee in Ohio.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) recently criticized the judges on the Senate floor, saying they "rolled the dice that a Democrat could replace them, and now that he won't, they're changing their plans to keep a Republican from doing it."

Russell Wheeler, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said it isn't unethical for judges to time their retirements around elections, but he called the pattern "part of the larger politicization of this appointments process, which is a very different animal than it was 20 or 30 years ago."

With or without those vacancies, Trump likely won't have the same opportunities on judicial confirmations as he did in his first term. That is because after years of presidents giving priority to judicial confirmations, there simply aren't that many potential slots left.

When Trump took office in 2017, he inherited more than 100 vacancies, after a Republican Senate majority held many judicial seats open during the final two years of President Obama's administration. He will inherit far fewer seats this time. It is also the case that many older Republican appointees already retired during Trump's first term.

Collins, the George Washington professor, said there are only 35 Republican-appointed appeals court judges either currently eligible to retire or who will become eligible to retire by the end of 2028.

"Even if they all retired, I don't think Trump would be able to match the number that he did the first time around," Collins said.

Write to Jan Wolfe at jan.wolfe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 31, 2024 09:00 ET (14:00 GMT)

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