Red State Judges Aren’t Like Blue State Judges
If the significance of Casey‘s vague standard isn’t obvious, consider this map:
That’s a map of the United States split into the 11 federal judicial circuits that determine which appellate court hears most federal lawsuits originating in one of the 50 states. The blue areas on this map represent circuits where a majority of the active federal appellate judges lean left, while the redder areas on the map represent conservative circuits.
There’s not a perfect match between conservative circuits and states that tend to vote Republican, or more liberal circuits and states that tend to vote for Democrats — the Fourth Circuit, for example, is dominated by Clinton and Obama appointees, and it also includes conservative South Carolina — but most voters tend to vote similarly to the circuit judges that preside over their state. Democratic strongholds like New England, New York and the Left Coast are part of the liberal First, Second and Ninth Circuits, while Texas and the deep South sit in the conservative Fifth and Eleventh Circuits. Indeed, the Fifth Circuit, which includes blood red Texas, is probably the most conservative circuit court in the country.
This is not a coincidence. Although the Constitution empowers the president to appoint judges with the consent of a majority of the Senate, a relic of a long-dead patronage system gives home state senators an unusual amount of control over the judges from their own state. Once upon a time, federal judgeships were doled out almost entirely by senators — the White House would typically acquiesce in whoever a state’s senators told them to nominate — and federal circuit judgeships were allocated to specific states so that everyone would know which open seat belonged to which state’s senators. This patronage system was largely dismantled during the Carter and Reagan Administrations, at least with respect to circuit judges, but one remnant of it remains.