Percent active status (full-time) U.S. District Court judges by party of appointing president
Updated: January 2025
Source: Russell Wheeler data sets Federal Judicial Center
Note: This figure shows at the end of each administration when party control of the White House changed, the percentage of the full-time court of appeals judgeships occupied by Democratic and Republican appointees, and the percent vacant. Data points may not total 100% due to rounding.
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(There were 144 judgeships at the start of the Reagan administration and 179 by the end of the H.W. Bush administration. Congress has added no judgeships since then.) Counting active-status judgeships is instructive but demands a caveat: at any one time, court of appeals cases are also decided by judges in senior status and district judges assigned temporarily to service on the courts of appeals. Moreover, while party-of-appointing-president is a helpful predictor of judicial decisions, it is far from a conclusive predictor. Numerous studies of aggregate decisions have shown that Democratic and Republican appointees differ somewhat in deciding in favor of civil liberties, environmental, and other claims, the differences for the most part are not great.
