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"I do think there is going to be a difference in their viewpoints," said retired U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, who is now in private practice in Fresno, Calif. "They will be more, if you want to use the term, conservative."
For example, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims has six vacancies. The important but little-known Washington-based court is juggling consequential cases like a Yosemite National Park trademark dispute and a demand for money from Northern California and Oregon farmers who lost irrigation water in 2001.
Eighty-eight trial-level district court positions are empty. Six of the vacancies are in Florida, six are in California and 11 are in Texas, and the judges to be replaced by Trump include notable liberals, like the Los Angeles-based Margaret Morrow. Among her many rulings, Morrow worried businesses in 2015 when she kept alive a discrimination lawsuit by a "gestational surrogate" who was denied a lactation break.
After the employer failed to get the unusual discrimination case dismissed, it was later settled,
"Filling many district vacancies would be valuable, because district judges are the 'workhorses' and decide most federal cases," University of Richmond School of Law Professor Carl Tobias said, noting that many "judges are overwhelmed by crushing dockets."
Most prominently, Trump has 17 vacancies to fill on the influential circuit courts of appeal. They include four seats on the liberal 9th Circuit that oversees cases filed in the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, and the Pacific territories of Guam and the Mariana Islands.
The circuit courts set precedent and, in effect, guide federal law in their respective regions, unless the Supreme Court steps in.
"There will be significant disagreement at the appellate court level," Wanger said.
In July, for example, three Democratic appointees on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers the mid-Atlantic states, overruled a Republican-appointed trial judge and struck down North Carolina's law requiring voters to show photo IDs when voting. The reasoning behind the appellate court's ruling can now apply to voting law challenges in South Carolina and the other states within the circuit (Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia).
Their clout means appellate court seats ignite some of the hottest conflicts.
The immediate vacancies among the 890 authorized federal judgeships positions, moreover, will grow as more judges leave active duty or die. Already, 13 have declared their intention to retire or take senior status this year. Senior status is a form of pre-retirement in which judges can decide how much work they want.
Some of the vacancies will entail simply swapping one Republican appointee for another. In other cases, like Morrow's or the planned May 1, 2017, departure to senior status of Wichita-based U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten, Trump will get explicit chances to replace a Democratic appointee.
That could be. Conservatives, for example, , have decried some of Marten's past rulings, including a 2011 decision blocking a Kansas law that defunded Planned Parenthood. Those conservatives can expect a replacement more to their liking.
"The justices that I am going to appoint will be pro-life," Trump said during the third presidential debate in October. "They will have a conservative bent."
In particular, Trump pledged to select court nominees who guard the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. That will tilt some courts in different directions. Among the vacancies that Trump will fill, for example, is one left by Los Angeles-based appellate Judge Harry Pregerson of the 9th a 93-year-old Democratic appointee who last year helped uphold laws that ban or restrict the carrying of concealed firearms in public.
Another 9th Circuit member to be replaced by Trump, Barry Silverman, is likewise a Democratic appointee who joined with Pregerson in upholding the gun restrictions. In other cases, Silverman has been more conservative.
Over time, all of the individual appointments will add up. Though Senate Republicans last year stalled confirmations, President Barack Obama during his two terms succeeded in getting 329 federal-judge nominations through the Senate.
Obama's success was achieved in part through a Senate rule change authored by Democrats that will, with leadership roles reversed, help Trump and Senate Republicans. Instead of the 60 votes previously required to break a filibuster, nominees for judgeships below the level of the Supreme Court will now need only a 51-vote majority.
Republicans control the Senate with 52 members, and can turn to Vice President Mike Pence in the event of a tie.
Particularly at the district court level, where judges render individual decisions but do not set broader precedent, Republican senators will play a key role in judicial selections. Texas Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, for example, have established a Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee, a bipartisan panel of attorneys to screen contenders.
