Right Wing Courts: Bush leaves land mines lying around for the nation to step on and go boom

After nearly seven years in the White House, President Bush has named 294 judges to the federal courts, giving Republican appointees a solid majority of the seats, including a 60%-to-40% edge over Democrats on the influential U.S. appeals courts.

The rightward shift on the federal bench is likely to prove a lasting legacy of the Bush presidency, since many of these judges -- including his two Supreme Court appointees -- may serve for two more decades.

And despite the Republicans' loss of control of the Senate, 40 of Bush's judges won confirmation this year, more than in the previous three years when Republicans held the majority.
n his eight years in office, Clinton named 367 judges, according to the Federal Judicial Center. When he left office in 2001, Democratic appointees had a slight majority among trial judges and on the courts of appeal.
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Among the 12 regional appeals courts, all but one are closely split or have a Republican majority. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals -- which covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington -- is viewed as the last bastion of liberalism, with 16 Democratic appointees and 11 Republicans. So far, Bush has named seven judges to the 9th Circuit, but he will not match Clinton's total of 14.

Does it make a difference whether a judge was appointed by Bush or Clinton?

Legal activists who closely follow the courts are convinced it does make a difference in a significant number of cases. "If you could pick only one thing, look at whether a case goes before a jury. The Bush judges vote to keep cases away from juries," said Judith E. Schaeffer, legal director for People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group in Washington.

In job-discrimination suits, for example, the employee who is the plaintiff typically wants his or her case heard by the jury. The employer -- usually, a business or corporation -- wants the dispute decided or dismissed by a judge, she said.

Schaeffer said her organization has looked closely at such cases and found that Bush's judges have made it harder for plaintiffs to sue or to win damages if they prevail. "That is the mind-set. They are bent on denying justice to ordinary Americans," she said.

Berenson, the former Bush administration lawyer, said conservatives and liberal judges differ mostly on their willingness to strike down laws.

"Liberals tend to celebrate judicial power; conservatives tend to be suspicious of it," he said. "Boiled down to its essence, conservatives want the judiciary to play a smaller role in our society. They want more room for democratic self-government. That means a conservative judiciary will defer to the executive branch on matters like the war on terrorism. And they will be more inclined to defer to the legislature on issues like abortion."

He cited the example of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed in 2003. In the past, the Supreme Court had struck down similar state bans, but last term, thanks to Bush appointee Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the federal law was upheld, 5-4.