Appeals Courts Pushed to Right by Bush Choices

One of the reasons liberals use to describe the importance of this election and why independents should choose Obama is to keep balance on the Supreme Court. That's certainly true and the Supreme Court gets most of the attention of the press and this blog, but it's not the only important court.

The New York Times reported Appeals Courts Pushed to Right by Bush Choices.

"Republican-appointed judges, most of them conservatives, are projected to make up about 62 percent of the bench next Inauguration Day, up from 50 percent when Mr. Bush took office. They control 10 of the 13 circuits, while judges appointed by Democrats have a dwindling majority on just one circuit." W. appointed 61 judges, Clinton 65. The federal courts are even more important since the Supreme Court is only taking about 75 cases a year, about half as many as it used to. Roberts talked about increasing that number but it hasn't happened yet.

The story that leads off the article makes the point perfectly:

"After a group of doctors challenged a South Dakota law forcing them to inform women that abortions “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being” — using exactly that language — President Bush’s appointees to the federal appeals courts took control. A federal trial judge, stating that whether a fetus is human life is a matter of debate, had blocked the state from enforcing the 2005 law as a likely violation of doctors’ First Amendment rights. And an appeals court panel had upheld the injunction. But this past June, the full United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit voted 7 to 4 to overrule those decisions and allow the statute to take immediate effect. The majority argued that it is objectively true that human life begins at conception, and that the state can force doctors to say so."

"In the case of the 2005 South Dakota abortion law, the dissenters — including two Democratic appointees, a Reagan appointee, and a Bush appointee — portrayed the court’s decision as a sharp change in direction. The majority, they contended, had not only bypassed “important principles of constitutional law laid down by the Supreme Court” but also violated the appeals court’s established standards for issuing preliminary injunctions."

"Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has promised to appoint judges in the same ideological mold as Mr. Bush did, while Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat, has said he will select judges with greater “empathy” for the disadvantaged."

"An Obama victory could roll back the Republican advantage on the appeals courts and even create a Democratic majority by 2013, according to a study of potential vacancies by Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution. But if Mr. McCain wins, Republicans could achieve commanding majorities on all 13 circuits."