Popping in with a bit of a dumb question for our legal experts.
I know several Courts of Appeals have particularly well known ideological bents, like the 5th circuit's conservatism or the 9th circuit's liberalism/leftism. I've taken a look at the appointing presidents in each circuit but I know that's not always a perfect measure, especially since the process used to be less partisan. But what are the general skews of the other courts?
(I know a lot of things are decided en banc anyway, but still!)
Just counting Presidents was a poor strategy 20 years ago, but it's become a better one since then as Obama and Trump nominated virtually no circuit court judges who didn't share their ideological leanings, and even Bush nominated very few (Peter Hall is gone, but I guess Helene White and Ilana Rovner -- a GHWB nominee -- are still there). Probably the best way to do this is simply to count Presidents -- you'll get a small number of errors but they'll mostly cancel out -- and also active senior judges, and count them at about 1/3 strength. (This will also have a weird distorting effect, because some senior judges maintain full caseloads and some hear a token case every few years, particularly elderly judges whose pride doesn't let them admit they're retired, but 1/3 is typical and should be about accurate in general).
This gives you the following ideological leans (at time of writing, January 24, 2022; courts are slowly moving left under the Biden Administration of course):
DC Circuit: Democrat 7.3 - 5.3 Republican
1st Circuit: Democrat 5.3 - 1.7 Republican
2nd Circuit: Democrat 9.3 - 7.7 Republican
3rd Circuit: Republican 9.3 - 6.7 Democrat (good example of a court that's about to have a liberal majority of active judges, but will continue to tilt right because there are so many Reaganite/GWB senior judges)
4th Circuit: Democrat 9.0 - 6.3 Republican
5th Circuit: Republican 14.0 - 5.3 Democrat
6th Circuit: Republican 14.0 - 5.7 Democrat (misleading, while this is a solidly right-wing court some of the Republicans here are liberal-ish; it's not at the same level as the Fifth)
7th Circuit: Republican 9.3 - 3.0 Democrat
8th Circuit: Republican 11.0 - 1.0 Democrat (the only
total win in America -- liberals cannot win a three-judge panel here)
9th Circuit: Democrat 19.7 - 16.7 Republican (not
that liberal anymore but there's still an advantage; note that the Ninth has a unique rule that 11 randomly selected judges, rather than the whole court, sit
en banc, so even
en banc sittings here are winnable for conservatives)
10th Circuit: Democrat 7.3 - 6.3 Republican
11th Circuit: Republican 8.7 - 5.0 Democrat
Fed Circuit (nonideological, just for fun): Democrat 9.0 - 5.3 Republican
This is pretty good. The most liberal Circuit nowadays is probably the Fourth (even though it largely covers some conservative states!) rather than the Ninth, which still tilts liberal but is more closely contested.
Speaking very generally, and I think this has become less true with Trump-appointed judges taking office, conservative-dominated courts in the South (particularly the Fifth and Eleventh) tend to be more strident than conservative-dominated courts in the Midwest (the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth). The Eighth certainly
should be the most conservative circuit but in practice it somehow seems to be the Fifth.
Something like this exists on the liberal side, too -- the Fourth seems more strident than the First or Second. Judges in the American South just seem to be more ideological.
(Note that under this metric, SCOTUS is Republican 6.0 - 3.0 Democrat, since they don't allow senior judges.)
Good sources for ideology on the courts might be
The Vetting Room, which is written from a liberal perspective and discusses the biographies and perspectives of new incoming judges, or
from a conservative perspective and from late 2019, a series from RRH called "President Trump and the Judiciary".
