Friday, May 24, 2024

President Biden's Impact on the Eleventh Circuit Federal Judiciary

 So we come to the final "numbered" circuit.  There are two more, by the way; the District of Columbia Circuit and the Federal Circuit.  The latter is a court with jurisdiction over specific non-geographic concerns like copyright law.  Beyond the 13 Circuit Courts there are a handful of others like: The United States Court of International Trade, the United States Court of Federal Claims, the Unites States Tax Court, and the United States Appeals Court for the Armed Services.  But wait!  There's more...  The president is also responsible to nominate, and the Senate to confirm, all the judges on the local courts of the District of Columbia.  Whew.

But, for now, let's just look at the Eleventh.  Split off of the 5th in 1981, it covers the states of Alabama, Georgia  and Florida.  Before Biden came into office it was the only Appeals court with gender parity, 6 men and 6 women.  And when he leaves office it will still have gender parity with two new judges of his choosing.  Until this year, as vacancies began to mount, the two Republican Senators from Florida refused to play ball; however, beginning in November of this year, they began to sign off of nominees.  The two Senators in Alabama will let hell freeze over before either of them who lift a pinky in the matter, and the two Senators in Georgia are both Democrats, so replacing judges in those courts has not been an issue.

The Eleventh Circuit's racial and ethnic Demographics skew well outside of the demographic make up of the Circuit's courts with one exception:  17.7% of the population of the three states is Black, and 17.7% of the judges across the circuit are also Black.  Now, it's not an equitable distribution and there are no judges of color in any of the District Courts of Alabama.

Given the relatively small number of Districts with openings and the lower impact of adding judges to Districts with  large numbers of judges, it would be fair to say that President Biden's impact on the Eleventh Circuit has been modest.









No comments:

Post a Comment