I made this post almost a year and a half ago:
It's good that Biden's finally getting judges confirmed. The courts are a mess right. In terms of active seats, this is what the circuit courts look like:
This is the best Biden can do based on current vacancies:
When it comes to all the talk about the so-called crazy Ninth, it's only a 16-13 Democratic-appointed majority. Trump has appointed 10 of those 13! The Eight Circuit is even worse, with a 10-1 Republican-appointed majority.
With that said, this illustrates why it was so important for Reid to go nuclear in 2013. The powerful DC Circuit Court will have a 7-4 Democratic-appointed majority once Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed. If the nuclear option hadn't been exercised then, the three Obama appointees would've gone to Trump. Biden's also set to get another nominee to the DC Circuit when Clinton-appointee David Tatel takes senior status. So, let's see where we're at now in terms of active judgeships and assume all pending nominations are confirmed:
With only four circuit vacancies without names, I won't make a second map. However, the 4th Circuit would become one shade darker red and the 7th Circuit would move one shade lighter blue.
What happened since then was that a GWB appointee on the 3rd Circuit took senior status, moving that court to a tie once the nominees are confirmed. The 1st Circuit no longer has any active Republican-appointed judges upon a GWB appointee assuming senior status. The 2nd Circuit nominally flipped after Biden filled the seat of a GWB appointee who died early last year, though probably retains a moderate-conservative lean until Judge Cabranes assumes senior status upon the confirmation of his successor.
Curious where this may go with Democrats retaining the Senate.
I repeated part of what you said, but your numbers on the 5th and 8th are incorrect (which are currently 12R-4D and 10R-1D, respectively). Biden can pull the 5th back to 12R-5D by filling the Texas seat. But yeah, those two courts are absolutely brutal for the left. I would say there's a low chance of the 3rd Circuit flipping when you consider that the oldest R-appointed judge is only 65. The 6th Circuit has too many Trump appointees to realistically see flipping (or even tying). The 7th Circuit will become 7R-4D once Biden gets both openings filled and it's worth noting that a GHWB appointee is 84 years old. Interestingly, two Trump appointees on that court were approved unanimously and appear to be fairly moderate. The 11th Circuit (7R-5D) likely won't budge either, with literally half the court having been appointed by Trump and the seventh R judge being staunch conservative William Pryor.
Obviously, I was only looking at age. Judges leave active service for a multitude of reasons, both planned and unplanned. Some Republican-appointed judges will surely leave the bench over the next years, though I certainly wouldn't expect many. So far, most of the work has been refreshing the active judgeships and expanding the pool of senior judges (the latter of which were, and still largely are, dominated by Reagan/GHWB/GWB appointees). The DC Circuit is effectively the crown jewel for the left right now, which will be a 7D-4R majority where the oldest in that majority was born in 1961 (with the youngest being born in 1986).
