President Trump has found a powerful but obscure bulwark in the appeals court judges he appointed during his first term.
Trump in his first term reversed rulings made by district court judges in his second, clearing the way for his policies and gradually eroding a perception early last...
31 of last year, or more than 500 orders issued across 900 cases.
With the current mess that the US is in, there has been plenty of talk of “what comes after” and how to think about the big structural changes needed to prevent another authoritarian from taking over and abusing all the levers of power for corruption and self-enrichment.
There are many different issues to address, but we should be thinking creatively about how to redesign our institutions to be more resilient to the abuses we’re witnessing.
One area ripe for creative rethinking is the federal judiciary, especially the Supreme Court. Because right now, we have a system where individual judges matter way, way too much. Rather than the minor reforms and incremental changes some are suggesting,I think the solution is to go big. Really big. Expand the Supreme Court to at least 100 justices, with cases heard by randomized panels.
I’ll explain the details below, but the core beliefs is simple: no single supreme Court Justice should ever matter that much.
President Trump has found a powerful but obscure bulwark in the appeals court judges he appointed during his first term. They have voted overwhelmingly in his favor when his administration’s actions have been challenged in court in his current term, a New York Times analysis of their 2025 records shows.
Time and again, appellate judges chosen by Mr. Trump in his first term reversed rulings made by district court judges in his second, clearing the way for his policies and gradually eroding a perception early last year that the legal system was thwarting his efforts to amass presidential power.
The actual figures are damning. Trump’s appellate appointees voted to allow his policies to take effect 133 times and voted against them only 12 times. That’s 92 percent of their votes in favor of the administration.
When Chief Justice John Roberts responded to Trump’s criticism of an “Obama judge” back in 2018, he insisted that “we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or clinton judges.”
The data suggests Roberts was either naive or lying.
The Times analyzed every judicial ruling on Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda, from Jan. 20 to Dec. 31 of last year, or more than 500 orders issued across 900 cases. About half of rulings at the appellate level were in Mr. Trump’s favor – better than his performance with the district courts, though worse than his record at the Supreme court, where the rulings on his agenda have almost all been on a preliminary basis in response to emergency applications.
And there it is. The higher you go up the judicial food chain, the better Trump does.District courts ruled in his favor 25% of the time. Appeals courts: 51%. The Supreme Court: 88%.
Now, some will argue this is the system working as designed-higher courts correcting overzealous lower court judges. And sure, that’s part of what appeals courts do. But the pattern here isn’t just about legal merit. It’s about how much individual judges matter, and how vulnerable the system is to ideological capture.
reforming the Supreme Court to Reduce individual Justice Influence
The current structure of the U.S. Supreme Court grants individual justices outsized influence over American law,leading to intense political battles over appointments and concerns about the court’s legitimacy. Proposals to reform the court aim to diminish the power of any single justice and foster greater stability in constitutional interpretation.
The core argument for reform rests on the principle that no single Supreme Court justice should be important enough to matter.Current practices-where presidential appointments and the timing of justices’ departures can dramatically shift the court’s ideological balance-create incentives for presidents to nominate ideological extremists and fuel national anxieties over individual justices’ health and retirement decisions.
Several potential reforms address this issue:
Elevating Appeals Court Judges: Appointing judges directly from the existing pool of approximately 180 active appeals court judges would provide a readily available source of qualified candidates.
Rotating System: Implementing a system where appeals court judges serve temporary, rotating terms on the Supreme Court would mirror the structures of many other nations’ highest courts and create a more dynamic relationship between the appellate and Supreme Court levels.
term Limits: Establishing term limits-such as, 18 years-for Supreme Court justices would address the increasing length of service, which has risen from an average of 15 years at the time of the Constitution’s writing to 25-30 years or more today.This would make appointments more predictable and lessen the incentive to appoint exceptionally young, ideologically driven justices.
These reforms offer benefits beyond simply diluting individual power.A restructured court could potentially increase its caseload. The number of cases heard annually has declined from around 150 in the 1980s to 60-70 today. Multiple panels operating concurrently could address a larger volume of legal questions, reducing the backlog of unresolved issues.
Moreover, a more diverse and regularly rotating court could promote more rational and consistent decision-making.
