Biden marks 235 judicial confirmations during White House tenure

Washington — President Biden on Wednesday is marking the 235 judicial confirmations he secured during his single term in the White House, a figure that surpasses that of his predecessor, President-elect Donald Trump.

Joined by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, Mr. Biden is delivering remarks from the White House highlighting the judges that he nominated and the Democrat-led Senate confirmed to the federal bench. The president’s judicial record includes one appointment to the Supreme Court, 45 to the federal courts of appeals, 187 to the U.S. district courts and two to the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Mr. Biden’s pick of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court was historic, as she is the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s highest court.

“The record is clear: the nominees of President Joseph Biden to the federal bench represent the best of the judiciary, the best of America,” Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said. 

One out of every four judges now on the federal bench were nominated by Mr. Biden, he said.

Since the start of his administration in 2021, the president, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee when he was in the upper chamber, had pledged to diversify the federal bench by appointing judges from varying professional and personal backgrounds. Mr. Biden’s judicial nominees included more than 45 public defenders, including Jackson, and 25 civil rights attorneys.

In addition to tapping the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, Mr. Biden also named more Black women to the federal courts of appeals than every previous presidential administration combined, according to the White House. 

The 235 judicial confirmations marks the largest number in a four-year term since the late President Jimmy Carter was in office and surpasses Trump’s appointments to the federal bench by one. Carter did not appoint any justices to the Supreme Court, but selected a record 262 judges to the federal courts after Congress in 1978 passed legislation creating 35 new appeals court judgeships and 117 district court seats.

Trump, though, named three justices to the Supreme Court, cementing a 6-3 conservative majority, and 54 judges to the federal appeals courts. 

The 13 courts of appeals hear more than 40,000 cases annually and typically issue the final decision in a legal dispute given that the Supreme Court hears fewer than 100 cases each year.