Brilliant California Lawyer Applauds Trump’s Court Picks

Ben Feuer, chairman of the California Appellate Law Group, has been deemed one of the top appellate litigators in California. The National Law Journal calls him an "Elite Boutique Trailblazer" while the Los Angeles Daily Journal named him one of the "Top 40 Lawyers Under 40." The San Francisco Bar awarded him its "Outstanding Barrister" prize, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals appointed him an "appellate lawyer representative," one of just a handful of attorneys selected from the Ninth's 11-state jurisdiction for that position.

And so, when Feuer wrote in February that "Thanks to Trump, the liberal 9 ^th Circuit will be liberal no more" he knows whereof he speaks.

He had nothing but praise for Trump's appointees who are reshaping the judicial landscape not only at the Ninth Circuit but across the land:

They're all experienced practitioners with stellar credentials. Accordingly, once fully staffed, the court's conservative wing will be newly empowered with sharp, young minds capable of steering the law in a more conservative direction over time.

And those appointees are beginning to impact that landscape.

When Donald Trump took office in January 2017, there were more than one hundred judicial court openings waiting for him to fill. With Senate confirmation of Daniel Bress to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week, thanks to retirements since then the president has filled 127 vacancies.

Although most attention has been paid to the confirmation battles over Supreme Court nominees Neal Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh it's the appeals courts which do the heavy lifting, or as Caleb Parker of Fox News put it, these are the "big leagues" of the judiciary system. That's because, of the 7,000 cases sent to the Supreme Court for judicial review every year, it only accepts around one percent of them. This leaves the decisions made at the appeals level in place.

The numbers tell part of the story. Trump's appointees already account for some 14 percent of the federal judiciary and more than 22 percent of the judges on the nation's courts of appeal. If Trump is reelected there is every likelihood that he will be able to nominate close to 40 percent of the country's federal judges. As The Nation magazine recently lamented, "Trump's court [nominees] will remain his legacy."

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