How Different Are the Trump Judges?

Abstract

Donald J. Trump’s first presidency broke the mold in many ways, including how to think about judicial appointments. Unlike other recent presidents, President Trump was open about how “his” judges could be depended on to rule in particular ways on key issues (e.g., guns, religion, and abortion) he was courting voters on. Other factors, such as age and personal loyalty to Trump, seemed important criteria as well. With selection criteria such as these, one might expect that Trump would select from a smaller pool of candidates than other presidents. Given the smaller pool and deviation from traditional norms of picking “good” judges, we were curious about how the Trump judges performed on a basic set of measures of judging. One prediction is that Trumpian constraints on judicial selection produced a different set of judges that underperform compared to judges appointed by other presidents. Using data on active federal appeals court judges from January 1, 2020, to June 30, 2023, we examine data on judges across three different measures: opinion production, influence (measured by citations), and independence or what we refer to as “maverick” behavior. With the caveat that we have less data on judges appointed by President Biden, Trump judges do not underperform. One might even say that they outperform expectations