美国国家公共电台 NPR President Trump Gets A Head Start On Shaping The Federal Courts

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President Trump 1 is moving quickly to put his nominees 2 in the federal courts. Today the president nominated five people to serve on federal appeals courts and five more to serve on lower courts. There's an unusually large number of vacancies 3 in the federal courts. That means Trump has an opportunity to have a significant impact early in his term. Here's NPR's Scott Horsley.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE 4: President Trump campaigned on the promise that he would appoint conservative judges to the bench. He even released a list of potential candidates for the Supreme 5 Court. Two of today's nominees are drawn 6 from that list. John Malcolm of The Heritage Foundation says all 10 seemed to be cut from similar judicial 7 cloth.

JOHN MALCOLM: They're all highly regarded in conservative legal circles and by practitioners 8 in the states where they reside.

HORSLEY: Malcolm, who helped to formulate 9 Trump's judicial list, says all 10 of the president's nominees would make excellent federal judges. And with more than a hundred other vacancies left to fill on the federal bench, Malcolm says today's picks are just a down payment.

MALCOLM: Starting with a Supreme Court vacancy 10 which has now been filled, President Trump certainly has a very good opportunity early on in his administration to leave an impact on the federal bench.

HORSLEY: Indeed, Trump came into office with a chance to fill more than twice as many court vacancies as President Obama had. Russell Wheeler, who tracks court nominations 11 at the Brookings Institution, says that's partly because for the last two years, the Republican-controlled Senate dragged its feet.

During the final two years of the Bush, Clinton and Reagan administrations, senators confirmed more than 60, 70 or 80 federal judges even though the Senate was controlled by the rival party. But in the last two years of the Obama administration, Wheeler says senators confirmed less than a third that many.

RUSSELL WHEELER: Just as they held the Merrick Garland seat open on the Supreme Court, they also held open an awful lot of vacancies on the district courts and the court of appeals.

HORSLEY: Vacancies the new president now gets to fill. Trump acknowledged that strategy at last month's swearing-in ceremony for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I especially want to express our gratitude 12 to Senator Mitch McConnell for all that he did to make this achievement possible. So thank you, Mitch.

HORSLEY: The Heritage Foundation's Malcolm cautions it wasn't a slam dunk. Had Hillary Clinton won the election, she might now be packing in the courts with a slate 13 of more liberal judges.

MALCOLM: So it took some guts 14 and some daring on behalf of Senator McConnell, and it paid off.

HORSLEY: All presidents leave a mark on the courts, especially if they serve for two terms. But with so many early vacancies, Trump has a chance to accelerate his impact, quickly chipping away at the narrow Democratic advantage that Obama left on the federal bench.

Wheeler says 51 percent of the current judges were appointed by Democrats 15. While that partisan 16 pedigree is not always predictive of how judges will rule, Trump has made no secret the kind of judicial philosophy he's looking for.

WHEELER: We can assume that the Trump administration is going to continue to nominate judges, certainly for the Court of Appeals, who have fairly strong conservative credentials 17. So I would look for more of the same. But the big variable will be whether or not the Democratic senators can put a brake on it.

HORSLEY: Senate Democrats gave up the right to filibuster 18 nominees for the lower courts, but there is still a tradition that nominees should not be confirmed over the objection of their home-state senator. Three of the nominees on Trump's list came from states with Democratic senators. They've promised close scrutiny 19 of those nominees if that genteel tradition survives. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.