President Trump is set to make another crucial judicial appointment.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report last week that Judge Janice Rogers Brown is stepping down from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, leaving an open space on the majority-liberal federal court for Trump to fill.
The D.C. Circuit is typically where federal agencies have their day in court, and is therefore a vital place to watch if you're concerned with the federal government overreaching its power.
Here's another reason to watch the D.C. Circuit: it is considered a stepping-stone for judges to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were all appointed to the Supreme Court from the D.C. Circuit. President Obama tried to follow this trend by nominating the Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit, Merrick Garland, to the Supreme Court last year, but to no avail.
Judge Brown was appointed in 2005 by President Bush and is currently one of only four Republican-appointed judges on the D.C. circuit (compared with seven Democrat appointees). According to the Washington Post, a possible nominee for the space includes Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, the current third-ranking attorney in the Justice Department.
Many Americans who voted for Trump in the 2016 election did so because of the vacancy on the Supreme Court, which Trump filled with Justice Neil Gorsuch. But the stakes in judicial appointments for the current administration go even deeper than this, and future appointments to the D.C. Circuit could shape the law on federal agencies for decades to come.
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