Constitutional Law

Bush Administration Pushed Federal Courts Further Rightward, Studies Show

Republican-appointed judges “control 10 of the 13” federal appeals court circuits and President George W. Bush has “transformed the nation’s federal appeals courts, advancing a conservative legal revolution that began nearly three decades ago under President Ronald Reagan,” The New York Times reports. The Times’ article states that since taking office Bush’s former senior political adviser, Karl Rove, “escalated” a policy of vetting judges for the federal bench to ensure that they shared a conservative ideology. The article also cites a 2006 study by Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein revealing that appellate court judges appointed by Reagan, President George H.W. Bush and Bush voted for a conservative outcome in cases far more often than judges appointed by Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on October 29, 2008 (boomark / email).