The Enlightenment

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Welcome to The Judiciary at Noon. Take a break from work to get an update on the oft-neglected third branch of the United States government, the judicial branch.

The series covers any updates to the federal judiciary, including any new judges confirmed, any deaths, resignations, or retirements from the courts, and any new vacancies that have occurred. It includes political analysis at the very end. This post covers the last two weeks.

Confirmations

No judges were confirmed for the two weeks spanning March 7, 2025 to March 20, 2025.

Vacancies

• Mar. 17, 2025: Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals announced she would be taking senior status upon the confirmation of a successor, opening up a vacancy on the court.
• Mar. 19, 2025: Chief Judge Diane Schwerm Sykes of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals announced she would be taking senior status on October 1, 2025, opening up a vacancy on the court.

58 vacancies remain on the federal judiciary, an increase from 56 two weeks ago.

Retirements, Deaths, and Resignations

• Mar. 15, 2025: Senior Judge Malcolm Francis Marsh of the District of Oregon died at the age of 96. He had been a Reagan appointee.

Analysis

Hallelujah! After a long, long wait, Judge Valerie Caproni’s vacancy on the Southern District of New York is finally listed on the US Courts website! It only took three months, but better late than never, I guess.

Two circuit court vacancies in a week. This is big news. President Trump will now have the opportunity to nominate six additional circuit judges. If we add this six to the 54 judges Trump appointed in his first term, Trump will have appointed 60 appellate judges, or just over a third of the entire federal appellate judiciary of the United States.

From a partisan perspective, I think the fact that some of these vacancies exist point to mismanagement by the Democratic Party. Four of these six vacancies are carry-overs from the Biden administration, and I hate to relitigate the fiasco over Biden’s judicial appointments, but…well, let’s relitigate it.

Of the four carry-over vacancies, three have been vacant for over a year. The seat vacated by former Judge Joseph Anthony Greenaway, Jr. on the Third Circuit has been open for almost two years now. The fourth vacancy, the seat vacated by Judge Kent Amos Jordan, also of the Third Circuit, was announced on May 9, 2024. Former President Biden didn’t even so much as nominate anyone to the seat!

There was the infamous deal crafted after the November election, where Senate Democrats pledged not to consider any of the four circuit nominees they had that had already gone through committee.

And then, of course, was Adeel Mangi. He was the nominee to the seat vacated by Judge Greenaway. There was considerable controversy surrounding him, with alleged ties to several organizations alleged to be antisemitic or hostile to law enforcement.

I’ve done a surface-level analysis of these allegations and come to the conclusion that Mangi has done nothing wrong. Some of the events held by the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, the Center of which Mangi was a board member, are highly questionable, but Mangi was not involved in the planning of these events.

And he was some kind of advisor to a prisoner’s rights group called the Alliance of Families for Justice. I just read their website, and they’re a human rights and civil rights organization that helps prisoners re-enter society after being in prison and makes sure they have rights in prison. I don’t see the hostility to law enforcement.

Mangi is an intelligent, highly-skilled, and well-educated lawyer with a breadth of experience who happens to have gotten himself involved in controversial political causes.

Be that as it may, when it is obvious he does not have the votes to be confirmed, as was apparent by March of last year, why are you holding him around instead of finding another nominee?

You lost, but at least you held your head high, right? Is that the thinking? Democrats really fumbled the ball on these vacancies.

Anyways, with Ikuta’s plan to assume senior status, I think there’s a good chance the Ninth Circuit will form a Republican majority under Trump’s second term. The Ninth Circuit has long been considered the most liberal circuit court in the country, but after Trump’s first term, the court’s liberal majority shrank significantly.

When Trump assumed office, the court had 20 Democratic judges and 9 Republicans. Today it has 16 Democrats and 13 Republican judges. The court has three Clinton judges eligible for senior status. All of them are in their seventies, and one of them, Judge Ronald Murray Gould, will be 82 by the end of Trump’s second term.

Let me finish quickly as this edition’s analysis has been going on for a while. The Chief Justice of our nation’s highest court, John Roberts, publicly rebuked Trump for his comments disparaging the federal judiciary. I find it odd, considering the Chief Justice was more than happy to pause a lower court order that Trump reinstate USAID a month ago after illegally halting payments.

Trump continues to skirmish with the federal judiciary. After a judge ordered the administration to stop deporting alleged criminals using a nineteenth century law, Trump deported 300 individuals anyway and called for the judge to be impeached.

We appear to be in the middle of a constitutional crisis, and I dearly that the Supreme Court can step in sooner rather than later to clarify the situation, because the country needs to see if Trump is willing to defy the Supreme Court or not and, more importantly, if the Supreme Court is willing to defy Trump.

SIGN-OFF

That’s it for this week’s The Judiciary at Noon. This has been Anthony Myrlados.