The Decision-Making Ideology of Federal Judges Appointed by President Trump

Abstract

What is the ideological direction of the judges appointed by President Donald Trump during his first four years in office? To answer this question we analyzed 395 U.S. district court decisions handed down by 87 judges appointed to the federal trial court bench by President Trump. These decisions were studied along with over 117,000 opinions by over 2,400 judges published in the Federal Supplement from 1932 through 2020. We find that judges appointed by Trump are significantly more conservative than judges appointed by other Republican presidents in recent decades. In particular, the Trump judges are much more conservative in the areas of civil liberties/rights and labor/economic regulation than judges appointed by any previous Republican or Democrat dating back to JFK.