Presidents’ First Judicial Picks Capture Theme for Nominations

President Joe Biden is expected to make his first judicial picks soon and if the practice of past presidents is any indication, those selections will reflect his priorities for judicial nominations.

His immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, signaled a willingness to work with Senate Republicans with his first circuit court nominee: Amul Thapar, who was championed by his fellow Kentuckyian, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for the Sixth Circuit.

Barack Obama tried showing he wanted to work across the aisle by announcing David Hamilton for the Seventh Circuit, a moderate pick supported by his Republican home-state senator Richard Lugar of Indiana.

“The initial sets of nominations are used to sort of make a statement about ‘what my administration is going to be about’ with regard to judicial nominations,” said Elliot Slotnick, an Ohio State University political science professor who studies judicial nominations.

Biden is working with 96 current and expected vacancies to lifetime federal judicial appointments, including 12 appeals court vacancies. Biden has signaled he’d like to move quickly on nominees prioritize diversity in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, and experience.

Presidents over the past 40 years have typically announced their first picks sometime between February and August, with nominations coming sooner in the most recent administrations.

Illustration: Jonathan Hurtarte/Bloomberg Law

Slotnick said Biden gets “a bit of a bye coming in” because of the time taken to push through Covid relief legislation. He’s also talked about judges by starting the commission on court reform that he promised on the campaign trail.

U.S. Supreme Court nominations have been among the first handful of picks for four of the past six presidents. Future justices like Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts have also been in the first groups of lower court picks.

Although Biden doesn’t have a Supreme Court vacancy available, he does have two openings on the D.C. Circuit, which is often a springboard for Supreme Court appointments.

Biden promised to appoint the first Black woman as a justice. Potential picks include D.C. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger.

Biden is under pressure from liberals to nominate diverse judicial nominees with an emphasis on people who have experience as public defenders and civil rights attorneys. Progressives don’t want corporate lawyers and federal prosecutors, who already makeup a large portion of sitting judges.