Of the 145 federal judges President Biden has appointed, what percent are women?
Critical Analysis
Find answers to the following questions using the visual above, any links below, your big brain, and your knowledge of American government and politics:
As of Nov. 5 – exactly a year before the 2024 presidential election – Biden had appointed 145 judges to the three main tiers of the federal judicial system: the district courts, the appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the data from the chart above, what percent of President Biden’s appointments to the federal judiciary are women?
Describe the change over time in the percent of women appointed to the judiciary.
How does party affiliation of presidents impact the percent of women they appoint to the judiciary?
Based on your knowledge of American political parties, what explains that difference in percentage of judicial appointment?
What president has appointed the highest percentage of women and the highest total of women to the judiciary in U.S. history?
A student named Fritz said that the reason President Eisenhower didn’t appoint any women to the judiciary was because there weren’t any. Fritz is dumb and he’s been asked to think before he speaks. After Fritz was done, a student named Harlan went on to comment that the gender of a judge doesn’t matter because a male judge can just as easily give justice to a woman as a female judge. How do you respond to Harlan’s opinion?
When former President Donald Trump left office in January, one of the most formidable aspects of his legacy was his imprint on the federal courts. In Trump’s four years in the White House, he appointed three Supreme Court justices, 54 appeals court judges and 174 district court judges, filling the judiciary with a raft of conservatives who were mostly white men. What is the most important consequence of Biden appointing a more diverse bench (federal court judges)?
Half of Americans are women. Make a claim about whether having a more gender demographically representative court is good for the United States.
Despite President Biden’s attempts to diversify the courts, as of 2022 Seventy percent of all sitting Article III federal judges were male. Based on your knowledge of American politics and the visual below,* how long do you imagine it will take for the courts to be evenly divided between men and women?
When President Biden nominates someone for the federal courts, according to Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. freaking Constitution, who must approve that nominee?
Learning Extension
Read the entire Pew Research Report on gender and Biden judicial nominees. Then check out these fun facts:
Florence Allen was the first female to serve on an Article III appellate court. In 1909, she was the only woman in a class of some 100 students at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt named her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Burnita Shelton Matthews was the first woman to serve as a U.S. District Court judge. She was appointed in 1949 by President Harry S. Truman to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She went to law school at night at what would become George Washington University School of Law, earning LL.B and LL.M degrees. She also became a Master of Patent Law.
Action Extension
Contact President Biden or holler at him on Twitter @POTUS and share your opinion on his judicial nominations.
Visual Extension*
