Such a weird thing to be excited about. Biden will get half the time to make appointments. This is the AstroTurf of good news.
Not to mention, none of those judges are as left of the centre as Trump’s are for the right. They are not going to save the country, especially with this Supreme Court.
If it were 6 of the 9 that mattered to most of us, I’d be excited. Instead I’m just kinda bloated
Judge /= justice
This is the AstroTurf of good news.
Which is par for the course from MotherJones
Well, the other will spend four more years making appointments. I’m sure he’ll catch up.
Just none of the important ones.
All judges are important, so I’m not sure what you mean
Besides appeals or SCOTUS everyone below can be overridden
Not practically, though, otherwise the post wouldn’t make sense.
The appellate courts do not hear anywhere near the volume of cases that district judges go through.
But supreme court sets precedent for the other courts and deals with most potentially damaging cases.
Precedent is set by every court. The Supreme Court considers what 9 judges think are the most important cases but a lot of times they aren’t. They regularly punt on difficult decisions. District courts don’t really have as much ability to do that so a lot of law is created at the local level. Also, the judges define the culture of the court.
The precedent set by circuit courts is only binding to court’s own jurisdiction and can be overridden by the supreme court if it wants. And the cases that can make or break democracy will be heard by the supreme court.
Chevron doctrine wasn’t overturned by a federal district court judge.
It was overturned by a group of regulatory captured supreme court justices.
Sure, all judges are important but let’s not placate ourselves in saying that Biden has filled more judges than Trump.
The damage the court has done to jurisprudence is going to be felt for decades.
The end of a vaguely-functioning America is so…tepid. Really shows how long we’ve been screwed. Movies got us wrong every time.
awesome, that means abortion rights are protected again, right?
Doesn’t it not really matter that much since the majority of SCOTUS judges are R appointees, and they get to pick and choose which appeals they want to rule on?
I’m not American, so please forgive me if I’m misunderstanding your judicial system.
You’re right about the mechanism of the Supreme Court justices. They rule on many important cases and regularly set precident.
However, since the vast, vast majority of cases don’t end up in the Supreme Court, lower courts have a massive impact into how justice is served.
That’s true, and I guess for smaller decisions the lower courts will have some leeway, but they ultimately still have to follow precedent set by SCOTUS.
So far…
Why don’t we just take the whole “appointment of judges” away. Why are we not electing judges?
Elected judges are far worse than appointed. You do not want someone campaigning and judging cases at the same time. They inevitably issue decisions that have precedential downstream effects and are based purely on trying to win their electorate.
Direct popular vote judge elections have their own set of issues - at the very least for lower courts
For instance, they tend to lead towards judges issuing out harsher penalties when campaigning than they normally would to appear “'tough on crime”
Look who the electorate just chose to run the country. You want them selecting judges too!? It’s slightly better the way it is since there’s at least some oversight.
Unfortunately, the orange is about to appoint a ton more. I hate this timeline.
Now that Dems already lost the vote and don’t need to dangle carrots for fear votes, they gotta make some PR moves for 2028.
He’s been appointing judges this whole time, it just doesn’t make headlines. 235 judges didn’t get appointed overnight. Biden has his very real problems, don’t make new ones up that just create apathy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_judges_appointed_by_Joe_Biden
This is the dumbest flex.
Not a flex. It’s incredibly important
Ok, but I’ll admit I’m confused on the praise or whatever is going on. Appointing judges is the duty of the President, so he did his job? Well he doesn’t actually appoint, it’s the senate who confirms, so, yay Senate?
To Cohen, the law professor from Drexel, the news is more nuanced than either Democrats or Republicans would like it to be. “Multiple things can be true at the same time,” he told me Sunday. “It’s fantastic they confirmed so many judges to counterbalance the Trump cadre of judges. But also, there should be zero vacancies remaining.”
(context)
there are still 36 judicial vacancies he can fill in the federal courts, all but 2 in the district courts. (A couple of Biden’s nominees did not wind up being confirmed after he reportedly did not formally submit their nominations to the Senate in time.)
so if we’re averaging it out like he didn’t turn in 38 assignments, he got a 86% (B grade). Happy he did the thing, just not sure on the fanfare of it all.
