Trump is Draining the Swamp of Liberal and RINO Activist Judges!

Trump is draining the swamp of liberal and RINO activist judges!

The death of Judge Stephen Reinhardt, 87, last week marks the end of three decades of liberal activism for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which also saw the abrupt retirement of Judge Alex Kozinski in December after accusations of sexual misconduct.

Reinhardt is but the latest prominent appeals judge Trump will replace. Judges Richard Posner and Alex Kozinski, both leading lights of the federal judiciary, left active service late in 2017. Posner, who served on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, retired in September 2017 to do charitable work for indigent plaintiffs. Kozinski, a Ninth Circuit judge, retired in December 2017 amid a deluge of sexual misconduct allegations. Both were considered conservatives, but each departed from conservative legal orthodoxy in different ways.

Reinhardt was close to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and California Governor Jerry Brown, and was named to the Court of Appeals by President Jimmy Carter. His decisions, which tended to read the case law in the most liberal way possible, were frequently reversed by the Supreme Court. In contrast, Kozinski was 35 when President Ronald Reagan put him on the 9th Circuit, and he remained the provocateur even after he became chief judge in 2007.

Trump has named two nominees for the Ninth Circuit thus far: Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Bounds was nominated for a seat in Oregon and former Hawaii Attorney General Mark Bennett for a seat in Hawaii. Neither has yet been confirmed.

The Senate confirmed 14 judges to federal circuit courts in 2017 — a record in the modern period. There are currently 152 vacancies on the federal courts, according to the U.S. Judicial Conference.