华盛顿-就这一点而言，甚至唐纳德·特朗普总统最热心的批评家都同意：他在联邦法院留下了深刻的烙印，这将使他的任期延续数十年。
他利用保守的司法任命的承诺赢得了共和党的怀疑者候选人。后来担任总统，他依靠外部保守的法律组织和参议院多数党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔（Mitch McConnell）采取流水线般的精确度，在联邦法官席上安置了230多名法官，其中包括最高法院的三名最新法官。特朗普从不厌倦对此吹嘘。
确实，在民主党对乔·拜登（Joe Biden）失去连任之后，参议院仍不受民主党批评的影响，仍在一个月以上确认法官。
克利夫兰凯斯西储大学法学院法学教授乔纳森·阿德勒说：“自卡特总统（总统吉米）出任总统以来，特朗普的工作基本上比任何一个总统都做得更多。” 他说，国会在卡特担任总统期间创造了约150个新的法官职位。
影响将是持久的。在特朗普任命的担任终身职位的法官中，有几名仍在30多岁。距离现在30年的21世纪中点，最高法院的三个选秀权仍可能在场上。
除了最高法院之外，全国上诉法院30％的法官都是由特朗普任命的，除少数案件外，其他案件都已经结束。
但是数字并不能说明整个故事。在接下来的数年中，关于堕胎，枪支，宗教权利和许多其他文化战争问题的无数法院裁决中，将揭示特朗普能够做的真正措施。
但是，当谈到总统自己对选举结果的法律挑战时，需要他感谢其职务的法官拒绝了他的主张。但是在许多其他重要方面，他在司法任命中的成功已经为保守派带来了红利。
当最高法院阻止纽约对在COVID-19指定为重灾区的教堂和犹太教堂的出勤实行一定的限制时，法院最新成员大法官艾米·康尼·巴雷特（Amy Coney Barrett）进行了决定性的第五次投票。此前，法院允许对包括另外两名特朗普提名人尼尔·戈拉奇和布雷特·卡瓦诺在内的四名法官的异议限制宗教服务。
9月，美国第11巡回上诉法院的全部6-4决定中，有五名特朗普被任命为多数，这使得佛罗里达州的重罪犯更难获得投票权。特朗普上任时，位于亚特兰大的法院拥有多数民主党任命的法官。
上个月，由特朗普任命的布里特·格兰特（Britt Grant）法官和芭芭拉·拉高（Barbara Lagoa）法官在由11名法官组成的第11巡回上诉小组中占据多数席位，该小组推翻了佛罗里达州旨在改变LGBTQ未成年人性取向的治疗禁令。全国其他上诉法院都维持了对转化疗法的禁令。
政治学教授肯尼斯·曼宁（Kenneth Manning），罗伯特·卡尔普（Robert Carp）和丽莎·福尔摩斯（Lisa Holmes）在对特朗普被任命为联邦审判法院的人进行的早期观察中，将他们的决定与1932年之前发表的117,000多个意见进行了比较。
政治科学家在十月份的一份工作报告中总结道：“特朗普任命的法官表现出独特的决策模式，总体上比前任总统保守得多。”
在过去四年的一个常数 - 通过弹劾，冠状病毒疫情和特朗普的选举损失 - 一直是他的提名和法官的参议院的确认。
总统在司法工作中有几个合作伙伴，但没有比麦康奈尔重要，麦康奈尔对重塑最高法院感到特别自豪。
现年78岁的麦康奈尔（McConnell）在接受采访时说：“我认为，这无疑是我参与过的最重要的事情。” “到目前为止，这是本届政府最持久的成就。”
他们可能不会把它称为在当时的合作伙伴关系，但他们的相辅相成的工作还没开始时就特朗普在2016年的选举。
特朗普利用联邦司法机构的问题赢得了选民的信任，他们可能对曾经支持堕胎权并且在政治上没有往绩的亿万富翁房地产开发商的保守证词有疑问。
他撰写了一份由保守派联邦主义者协会和传统基金会提供的潜在候选人名单，他将从中填补最高法院的空缺。
凯利安·康威（Kellyanne Conway）曾于2016年担任竞选经理，他说，这是一个已经任职多年并想登上总统职位的人“没有勇气去做，这就是名字。”
碰巧的是，在2月安东宁·斯卡利亚法官去世后，当时有一个高等法院开庭。
输入McConnell。共和党阻止了巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）总统提名梅里克·加兰德（Merrick Garland），并拒绝了共和党人先前确定为他们可以支持的高等法院提名人的名誉上诉法院法官的听证会。
在特朗普的选举前景似乎黯淡之时，这是一场赌博，但他以惊人的战胜希拉里·克林顿的胜利获得了回报。
而且，在特朗普于2017年1月上任时，高等法院的席位并不是唯一等待填补的席位。在共和党人利用参议院多数席位推动提名过程在奥巴马总统的最后两年中几乎停顿之后，共有104个法官职位空缺。办公室。在那段时间里只有28.6％的提名人被确认。
步伐几乎立即加快。共和党紧迫地采取行动，确认并没有松懈。在特朗普的头两年，他们推翻了30名上诉法院法官和53名地方法院候选人。这是自里根（Ronald Reagan）以来两年来最高的上诉法院确认数，几乎是奥巴马在头两年中获得确认的数倍。
麦康奈尔和参议院司法委员会最高的共和党人取消了允许反对党推迟确认的规则，最显着的是只需要简单的多数票，而不是60票即可动议最高法院的提名人。民主党人对停滞的加兰提名感到不满，否则将阻止戈索奇在2017年4月的确认。
罗德岛州参议员谢尔登·怀特豪斯（Sheldon Whitehouse）是参议院司法委员会的一名民主党人，也是特朗普的敏锐批评者，他说，特朗普的司法遗产“与他所允许的他人做的事相比，要少得多。
怀特豪斯表示，特朗普实质上将司法提名“外包”给了麦康奈尔和联邦主义者协会，特别是该组织的领导人伦纳德·利奥和前白宫顾问唐·麦加恩，后者是联邦提名协会的重中之重。
怀特豪斯说，与此同时，联邦主义者协会和其他司法机构，包括司法危机网络和美国人的繁荣，已经以匿名方式获得了数百万美元的捐款，并为右翼法官开展了公开和幕后活动。
怀特豪斯说：“特朗普“为司法选择中的特殊利益干预开辟了渠道。我认为这很新颖，显然很容易导致腐败。” 他说：“几十年来，右翼部队一直在寻求特朗普政府直接赋予他们的司法提名方面的影响力。”
麦康奈尔嘲笑批评。他说：“他们中的许多人都属于联邦主义者协会，这是因为这是联邦主义者协会的核心使命-让法院恢复其应做的事情，而不是在替补席上立法。” 。
在竞选过程中以及在白宫活动中，特朗普经常将自己在司法任命方面的记录作为成就的典范，而无视奥巴马时代发生的障碍。
他说：“你知道，当我进来时，我们有超过100名未任命的联邦法官。现在，我不知道奥巴马为什么离开了。这对我们所有人来说就像是一件精美的大礼物。他为什么要离开那个地狱？也许他变得沾沾自喜了。” 特朗普忽略了麦康奈尔阻止了奥巴马提名人这一重要事实。
特朗普任期之初的高等职位空缺实质上是麦康奈尔的礼物。安东尼·肯尼迪（Anthony Kennedy）法官于2018年退休的决定允许特朗普以更为保守的卡瓦诺夫（Kavanaugh）取代法院的摇摆司法人员，卡瓦诺夫（Kavanaugh）幸免于难。卡瓦诺否认了这一主张。
在2020年大选之前不到两个月，特朗普因大法官露丝·巴德·金斯堡（Ruth Bader Ginsburg）的去世而被赋予了另一个职位。特朗普和参议院共和党人毫不犹豫。甚至在金斯堡被埋葬在阿灵顿国家公墓之前，他就提名了巴雷特。麦康奈尔确保在大选之前就已经确认了这一点。
布鲁金斯学会客座研究员拉塞尔·惠勒说，即使在特朗普连任失败后，参议院仍继续确认特朗普的提名，这打破了自1900年以来一直保持的规范。联邦检察官托马斯·基尔希（Thomas Kirsch）于12月15日在位于芝加哥的联邦上诉法院被证实是巴雷特的替补人，多数通过党派投票。
唯一的例外是，参议院于1980年两党接纳一名前参议院工作人员为联邦上诉法院法官。提名人是斯蒂芬·布雷耶（Stephen Breyer），现为最高法院大法官。
除了遗产问题，特朗普的法官记录是否会刺激司法机构的重大变革。
布鲁金斯大学的惠勒说，特朗普和麦康奈尔团队合作最显着的特点之一就是，他们的举止好像得到了大多数美国人的支持。他们没有，他说。
惠勒说：“我在现任工作组中的主要职责是，目前尚无授权将司法机构向右移。” “特朗普在2016年大规模失去了民众投票，但他的举止似乎表现出他有权重塑最高法院和上诉法院一级的联邦司法机构，我认为这是没有根据的。”
自由主义者团体已经在最高层次上推动变革，包括扩大最高法院和延长法官任期。这两种想法的政治前景充其量是不确定的。
但是从任何角度来看，特朗普所做的事情都毫无疑问。
自由主义倡导组织Demand Justice的执行董事布莱恩·法伦（Brian Fallon）说，“由于他的司法任命，美国将在未来数十年内继承唐纳德·特朗普的遗产。” 接受特朗普司法任命的人将“终生佩戴“特朗普法官”的绰号。”
康威认为，事实并非如此。她说：“这将是他的遗产中最持久，杰出和持久的作品之一。”
Donald Trump's most fevered critics agree: He has left a deep imprint on the federal courts that will outlast his one term in office for decades to come.
He used the promise of conservative judicial appointments to win over Republican skeptics as a candidate. Then as president, he relied on outside conservative legal organizations and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to employ an assembly line-like precision to install more than 230 judges on the federal bench, including the three newest justices of the Supreme Court. Trump never tired of boasting about it.
Indeed, undeterred by Democratic criticism, the Senate was still confirming judges more than a month after Trump lost his reelection bid to Joe Biden.
“Trump has basically done more than any president has done in a single term since (President Jimmy) Carter to put his stamp on the judiciary,” said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland. Congress created about 150 new judgeships during Carter’s presidency, he said.
The impact will be enduring. Among the Trump-appointed judges, who hold lifetime positions, several are still in their 30s. The three Supreme Court picks could still be on the court at the 21st century’s midpoint, 30 years from now.
Beyond the Supreme Court, 30% of the judges on the nation’s court of appeals, where all but a handful of cases reach their end, were appointed by Trump.
But numbers don't tell the entire story. The real measure of what Trump has been able to do will be revealed in countless court decisions in the years to come on abortion, guns, religious rights and a host of other culture wars issues.
When it came to the president's own legal challenges of the election results, however, judges who have him to thank for their position rebuffed his claims. But in many other important ways, his success with judicial appointments already is paying dividends for conservatives.
When the Supreme Court blocked New York from enforcing certain limits on attendance at churches and synagogues in areas designated as hard hit by COVID-19, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the newest member of the court, cast the decisive fifth vote. Previously, the court had allowed restrictions on religious services over the dissent of four justices, including the other two Trump nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Five Trump appointees were in the majority of the 6-4 decision by the full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September that made it harder for felons in Florida to regain the right to vote. The Atlanta-based court had a majority of Democratic-appointed judges when Trump took office.
Last month, Judges Britt Grant and Barbara Lagoa, both named by Trump, formed the majority on a three-judge 11th circuit panel that struck down local Florida bans on therapy that seeks to change the sexual orientation of LGBTQ minors. Other appeals courts around the country have upheld the conversion therapy bans.
In one early look at Trump’s appointees to federal trial courts, political science professors Kenneth Manning, Robert Carp and Lisa Holmes compared their decisions with more than 117,000 opinions published dating to 1932.
“Trump has appointed judges who exhibit a distinct decision-making pattern that is, on the whole, significantly more conservative than previous presidents,” the political scientists concluded in a working paper in October.
The one constant of the past four years — through impeachment, the coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s election loss — has been his nomination of and Senate confirmation of judges.
The president has had several partners in the judicial effort, but none more important than McConnell, who takes particular pride in reshaping the Supreme Court.
“I think it’s far and away the most consequential thing I’ve ever been involved in,’’ the 78-year-old McConnell said in an interview. “And it’s the most long-lasting accomplishment of the current administration, by far.’’
They might not have called it a partnership at the time, but their mutually reinforcing work began even before Trump’s election in 2016.
Trump used the issue of the federal judiciary to win trust with voters who might have questions about the conservative credentials of a billionaire real estate developer who had once supported abortion rights and did not have a track record in politics.
He put in writing a list of potential nominees, provided by the conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, he would select from in filling a Supreme Court vacancy.
Kellyanne Conway, who served as his campaign manager in 2016, said it was a move that people who had been in office for years and wanted to ascend to the presidency “didn’t have the courage to do, which is name names.”
As it happens, there was a high court opening at the time, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.
Enter McConnell. The Republican blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, refusing so much as a hearing for the respected appeals court judge whom Republicans had previously identified as a high court nominee they could support.
It was a gamble at a time when Trump’s electoral prospects seemed dim, but it paid off with his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton.
And the high court seat wasn’t the only one waiting to be filled when Trump took office in January 2017. Altogether, 104 judgeships were open after Republicans used their Senate majority to grind the nomination process to a near halt in Obama’s final two years in office. Only 28.6% of his nominees were confirmed in that stretch.
The pace quickened almost immediately. Republicans moved with an urgency on confirmations that hasn’t let up. In Trump’s first two years, they pushed through 30 appellate court judges and 53 district court nominees. It was the highest number of appellate court confirmations in a two-year period since Ronald Reagan and nearly double the number that Obama secured in his first two years.
McConnell and top Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee eliminated rules that had allowed the opposition party to delay confirmations, most notably requiring just a simple majority, instead of 60 votes, to move Supreme Court nominees. Democrats, bitter over the stalled Garland nomination, otherwise would have blocked Gorsuch’s confirmation in April 2017.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a sharp Trump critic, said Trump’s judicial legacy “is a lot less about what he’s done than what he’s allowed others to do in his name.’’
Whitehouse said Trump essentially “outsourced” judicial nominations to McConnell and the Federalist Society, specifically the group’s leader Leonard Leo and former White House counsel Don McGahn, a Federalist Society member who made judicial nominations a top priority.
At the same time, the Federalist Society and other conservative groups, including the Judicial Crisis Network and Americans for Prosperity, have taken millions of dollars in anonymous donations and waged public and behind-the-scenes campaigns for right-wing judges, Whitehouse said.
Trump “opened the channel for special-interest interference in judicial selection," Whitehouse said. “That, I think, is very novel and obviously lends itself to corruption." He said: “Right wing forces have for decades sought the kind of influence in judicial nominations that the Trump administration outright gave them.’’
McConnell scoffed at the criticism. “The reason a lot of them belong to the Federalist Society is because that is sort of the core mission of the Federalist Society — to get the courts back to doing what they’re supposed to do and not legislate from the bench,” he said.
On the campaign trail and at White House events, Trump would often cite his record on judicial appointments as an example of accomplishment, while ignoring the obstructions that occurred during the Obama years.
“You know, when I got in, we had over 100 federal judges that weren’t appointed," he said. “Now, I don’t know why Obama left that. It was like a big, beautiful present to all of us. Why the hell did he leave that? Maybe he got complacent.” Trump omitted the essential fact that McConnell had blocked Obama's nominees.
The high court vacancy at the start of Trump’s term was, in essence, a gift from McConnell. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision to retire in 2018 allowed Trump to replace the court’s swing justice with the more conservative Kavanaugh, who survived his own bruising confirmation hearings that included allegations he sexually assaulted a woman when they were both in high school decades ago. Kavanaugh denied the claims.
Less than two months before the 2020 election, Trump was handed another opening with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Trump and Senate Republicans didn’t hesitate. He nominated Barrett even before Ginsburg was buried at Arlington National Cemetery and McConnell ensured the confirmation was done before the election.
The Senate has continued confirming Trump nominees even after his defeat for reelection, breaking a norm that has stood since 1900 with one exception, said Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. Federal prosecutor Thomas Kirsch was confirmed as Barrett's replacement on the federal appeals court based in Chicago on Dec. 15, on a mostly party-line vote.
The exception was the Senate’s bipartisan acceptance in 1980 of a former Senate staff member as a federal appeals court judge. That nominee was Stephen Breyer, now a Supreme Court justice.
Along with the question of legacy is whether Trump’s record on judges spurs major changes to the judiciary.
Wheeler, at Brookings, said one of the most striking features of the teamwork of Trump and McConnell is that they acted as though they had the support of most Americans. They did not, he said.
“My main beef with this current group is that there’s just no mandate to turn the judiciary so far to the right,” Wheeler said. “Trump lost the popular vote massively in 2016, but nevertheless has behaved as if he had a mandate to reshape the federal judiciary at the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals level and I think that’s just unfounded.”
Liberal groups already have been pushing for changes at the highest level, including expansion of the Supreme Court and term limits for justices. The political prospects for both ideas are uncertain, at best.
But there's less doubt from any vantage point about what Trump has wrought.
The U.S. “will be living with the legacy of Donald Trump for decades to come as a result of his judicial appointments,’’ said Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, a liberal advocacy group. People who accepted judicial appointments from Trump will “wear the moniker of ‘Trump judge’ for the rest of their lives."
Not so, in Conway's view. "It will be one of the most lasting pieces of his legacy, distinguished and durable,” she said.
