Judiciary

Obama leads by a mile in women judicial picks, study says

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President Barack Obama has successfully appointed more women to the federal bench than any president in history, a new study shows.

Forty-two percent of Obama’s judicial appointees have been women, according to a study (PDF) by the liberal-leaning Alliance For Justice. That’s a rate almost double that of former President George W. Bush (22 percent) and almost 50 percent greater than that of President Bill Clinton (29 percent).

The study also found that Obama, the first president to appoint two women to the U.S. Supreme Court, has already appointed more female federal judges than Bush did during his entire presidency (80 to 71) and more minority women judges (33) than either Bush (22) or Clinton (23) did.

“This administration deserves credit for working to create a federal judiciary that more closely reflects the richness and diversity of the American people,” AFJ president Nan Aron said in a prepared statement Tuesday announcing the release of the study.

The study doesn’t include Obama’s three recent nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, two out of three of whom are women, but none of whom have been confirmed.

Hat tip to The BLT: The Blog of LegalTimes.

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