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Joe Biden put his legacy on the federal bench after Senate Democrats raced to confirm more than 200 nominees for lifetime appointments to courts across the US, surpassing Donald Trump’s tally in his first presidency.

The number of judicial nominees by Biden reached 235 as Congress ended its most recent session last week, surpassing the 234 federal judges confirmed by Trump in his first term. This is the most justices appointed by a president to a four-year term since the 1980s, Biden said in a statement.

As Biden’s presidency draws to a close, Senate Democrats — tasked with confirming federal judges — are pushing to secure as many confirmations as they can before control of Congress and the White House are handed to Republicans. next month.

They hope this last dash will counter the wave of judicial confirmations in Trump’s first term that fundamentally changed the US judiciary, shifting courts at all levels to the right.

Trump’s appointment of three justices to the Supreme Court also changed the ideological scale of the nation’s most powerful bench, dividing it 6-3 between conservative and liberal justices.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has since handed down rulings that have reverberated throughout American society, including overturning a ruling that contained the constitutional right to abortion — moves that in turn emboldened justices who lean to the right of lower courts, many appointed by Trump, to rule. in favor of conservative causes.

The growing clout of America’s judiciary coupled with an increasingly polarized political landscape has made judicial appointments a critical limit on presidential power. Judges at all levels have the opportunity to evaluate challenges to administrations’ rules and laws, providing a powerful check on controversial policies.

The last-minute push by Democrats, which began after Biden’s election loss in November, angered Trump. she called to the Senate to block Biden’s judicial nominations: “Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door.”

“There is growing polarization around the appointment of federal judges,” said Paul Butler, a Georgetown Law professor. The Republican party has historically dominated judicial elections — and Biden has taken a leaf out of the playbook, Butler added.

Biden’s appointments are also notable for their diversity, including what he described as “a record number of judges with backgrounds and experiences that have long been overlooked”.

Approximately two-thirds of confirmed judges are women and people of color. Biden has appointed more Black women to US circuit courts than all previous presidents, and his only Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, is the first black woman on the high court

“Biden’s focus is to fix all those decades where people other than straight white men weren’t considered for the bench,” Butler said.

Biden also selected a record number of public defenders, more than 45, as well as labor and civil rights lawyers – at least 10 and more than 25, respectively – for the federal bench. .

“It is absolutely essential for a thriving, multiracial democracy to have judges who are not only like the rest of us, but who have studied and spent their careers understanding how the laws affect people’s lives,” said Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil-rights group.

The pendulum is set to swing back again. A new stream of conservative judicial appointments is expected once Trump returns to the White House next month and as Republicans hold the Senate.

“I’m very proud of how the Senate Republican Conference worked as a team with former President Trump to shape the federal judiciary,” John Thune, the newly elected Republican Senate leader, said earlier this year. “I look forward to working with him to redouble our efforts during his next term in office.”