Civics 101.4th District Federal Circuit Courts

I love all things civic and political and I have been exploring our Federal Circuit Courts again over the break.  The result is a series of graphics to depict the demographics of the courts.

So I began with this image of the 4th Circuit of the Federal District Court (there are eleven circuits all together) Circuit court judges are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and have recently been center stage in the filibuster abuse controversy. District courts are the first step in federal Constitutional rulings. From here cases can advance to the Appellate Level and then ultimately to the Supreme Court.

Districts are configured around state boundaries and then subdivided by a mix of history and case load. The Fourth circuit covers the states/commonwealths/districts of Maryland, the District of Columbia, both of the Virginias and both of the Carolinas. MD, DC and SC are intact districts; VA and WV are both divided into two Districts and North Carolina is divided into 3; however, there are more judges in the District of the District of Columbia (15) than in all three of North Carolina's Districts combined (13).

In this image, I have subdivided the districts into roughly equal wedges around an approximated center in the amount equal to the number of judges assigned to each district. Then beginning at the top and rotating clockwise around the district, I colored in the wedges to correspond to the President who nominated the particular judge who is currently occupying the seat. Vacant seats are in grey.

From this, you can make many observations. For example, no judge hearing cases of a Constitutional nature in the District of Eastern North Carolina was appointed by a Democratic President. Conversely, by the end of his presidency, Obama will have appointed the overwhelming majority of judges hearing Constitutional cases in both Maryland and South Carolina.

Now I darken out the seats held by men to consider the state of gender equality in the Fourth District.  Three of the districts have no female judges: Western Virginia, Western North Carolina, and Eastern North Carolina.  Of the remaining 7 districts in the circuit there are 17 women serving as judges.  That means that in the 4th Circuit 26% of the justices are women.

By District:

Eastern West Virginia = 67% (2 out of 3)

District of Columbia = 31% (5 out of 16)

Maryland = 30% (3 out of 10)

Eastern Virginia = 27% (3 out of 11)

Middle North Carolina = 25% (1 out of 4)

South Carolina = 20% (2 out of 10)

Western West Virginia = 20% (1 out of 5)

Western North Carolina = 0% (0 out of 5)

Western Virginia = 0% (0 out of 4)

Eastern North Carolina = 0% (0 out of 4)

By President:

Gerald Ford - 0 Justices out of 1

Ronald Reagan - 0 Justices out of 4

George Herbert Walker Bush = 2 Justices out of 4

Bill Clinton = 5 Justices out of 13

George Bush = 1 Justice out of 22

Barack Obama = 9 Justices out of 21

Of the 7 vacant seats all have nominees pending.  If those seven are confirmed and appointed, 3 more women will join the circuit.  This would have the effect of increasing the percentage of woman justices to 27% from the current 26%.