Does Party Affiliation Trump Appointing President? An Empirical Analysis of Trump’s Appellate Judges (with John Kastellec)

Abstract: We examine whether President Trump’s appointees to the U.S. Courts of Appeals act differently from other Republican appointees. Using a new dataset covering the universe of published U.S. Courts of Appeals opinions, we show that three-judge panels with Trump-appointed judges do not produce more conservative outcomes than panels with other Republican presidents’ appointees. Trump appointees are, however, more likely than non-Trump-Republican appointees to cast conservative votes from the bench—a gap that widens with the number of Democratic-appointed judges on the panel. This difference between panel outcomes and individual votes is driven by Trump appointees’ increased tendency to dissent from liberal majorities; they also write concurring opinions more often, especially when sitting with Democratic appointees. This evidence from the federal judiciary speaks to the broader debate over whether Trump represents a continuation of, versus a departure from, longstanding trends in Republican Party politics.

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