Trump's Appeals Court Selections
NEW DATA comparing the education of Trump's judges to previous presidents'
In this post:
State and federal legal leaders have different educational backgrounds
Presidents have different preferences
Something changed in the last generation
Trump picked a higher percentage of Ivy+ law grads than any other president
During a panel at a recent Federalist Society gathering, several participants lauded the smarts and energy of President Trump’s first-term federal appeals court nominees. The panelists also suggested that Mr. Trump had selected judges from a wider array of backgrounds than is typical.
My ears perked up.
If only I had spent countless hours collecting information on the education backgrounds of lots of high-ranking public officials…
I need to back up.
Readers of this newsletter know that one of my current interests is stopping the elite obsession with Ivy+ schools and opening more professional doors to talented people from other institutions. Two of my key arguments are 1) people from other schools dominate leadership roles in most of America, and 2) nevertheless, certain people and certain places fixate on the graduates of elite schools.
It is widely known that all current US Supreme Court justices graduated from private colleges and law schools, that 7/9 went to Ivy+ schools for undergrad and that 8/9 went to Ivy+ for law school.
My recent report showed that this is NOT representative of leadership in other legal (or governing) roles. For instance, state supreme court justices primarily went to public over private, in-state over out-of-state, and flagship public over Ivy+ for undergrad and law school. I found the same results for state attorneys-general and the leading lawyers from each state’s leading law firms. (The two graphs below show state supreme court results.)
That same report showed that while current federal appeals court judges are not as private- and Ivy+ heavy as SCOTUS, they are more so than state supreme courts. For instance, 40% of federal appeals court judges went to an Ivy+ for law school.
So my new question—spurred by that FedSoc panel discussion—was: Do presidents have different preferences when it comes to the schooling of their appeals-court nominees?
What I show below are new results—they are not in my aforementioned report. You are reading it here first.
I looked at the education backgrounds of all current appeals court judges (circuits 1-11, federal circuit, and DC circuit), including all judges in “senior status” (semi-retired). I categorized the judges based on the presidents who appointed them.
Currently, only one Nixon and one Ford nominee are still serving (in senior status). So I don’t include those presidents. I do include Carter, Reagan, HW Bush, Clinton, W Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.1
First, let’s look at undergraduate schooling. All of the presidents chose more private-school grads than public. Since Clinton, the percentage has been pretty stable—about 7 of 10. In fact, Clinton, Obama, Trump, and Biden had nearly identical ratios, almost 2:1 private to public.
The differences start to emerge when we consider particular types of publics and privates, namely flagship publics (a state’s top public) and Ivy+ (the 8 Ivies plus MIT, Stanford, Duke, and Chicago). George HW Bush picked very few Ivy+ grads. All the other presidents chose more Ivy+ than flagship (please recall how different this is from state supreme court justices).
Three Democratic presidents—Carter, Obama, and Biden—picked far more Ivy+ than the other presidents. Interestingly, my report found that blue states are much likelier to have a disproportionate number of Ivy+ leaders.
Now let’s look at law schools.
This is remarkable. More of Reagan’s judges went to public law schools than private. The next three presidents picked significantly more private grads. Then Obama, Trump, and Biden chose FAR more private grads. We’re in an era of presidents overwhelmingly favoring private law school products. Trump even more so than Biden.
But now look at the differences related to flagship vs. Ivy+ law schools.
Three GOP presidents (Reagan, HW Bush, and W Bush) chose more public flagship law grads than Ivy+ law grads. But the last three presidents (Obama, Trump, and Biden) seem to have largely given up on flagship law schools. They love Ivy+ grads.
And no one picked a higher percentage of Ivy+ law grads than Trump.
So much can and should be said about these results, but let me end with one thought.
My report showed that there are obviously outstanding legal professionals who came from schools other than the Ivy+. In fact, whether state supreme court justices, state AGs, or leading attorneys, flagships are producing more of these leaders than Ivy+. That’s true of undergrad and law.
But our recent presidents—whether we’re talking about SCOTUS or appeals courts—are behaving as though all the talent is at Ivy+ schools. Moreover, it’s remarkable that the GOP’s Trump—considering conservatives’ recent anger at Ivy+ behavior—is the most pro-Ivy+ president in this analysis.
I hope those helping him pick judges in his second term do much more to elevate talented people from other educational institutions.
Just to be clear, what I present here are the currently serving appeals court judges, not all appeals court judges that were appointed by these presidents. So, for example, many Reagan appointees are fully retired or deceased so they are not reflected in this data. I don’t think this is a big problem; I have no reason to believe that what I present here is biased in some way. That is, I’m hard-pressed to think of a reason why still-serving Reagan and Carter appointees would not be representative of all Reagan and Carter appeals-court appointees in terms of education. But it is possible that these findings are not perfectly representative.