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Although former President Jimmy Carter only served one term in the White House, he proved to be a major influence on the federal courts, with more than 260 federal judges appointed nationwide, including had influence over the nation’s highest court, which included those who would later wield great power.
Her diverse and barrier-breaking appointment helped reshape the federal bench and paved the way for women and minorities to serve on the Supreme Court.
Here are just a few of the ways Mr. Carter helped reform the federal judiciary during his four years in office.
Bench diversification
During his four years in the White House, Carter appointed 262 federal judges, more than any single-term president in U.S. history. And despite failing to appoint a Supreme Court nominee, Carter’s judicial appointment was history-making in its own right. That’s because he appointed a record number of minority and women jurists during his term as president, announcing 57 minority judges and 41 women jurists during his four-year term.
This was aided in part by Carter’s creation of the Circuit Court Nominating Commission during his first year as president. Mr. Carter was tasked with identifying potential judicial nominees as part of a comprehensive effort to make America’s courts more representative of the people.
These judges helped diversify the federal judiciary. More broadly, they have also helped shape hundreds of amicus curiae opinions handed down at the district and appellate court levels.
Supreme Court influence
Speaking to NBC News’ Brian Williams in 2005, Carter said he planned to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court if a vacancy occurred during his term as president.
In fact, Mr. Carter even had in mind the name of Judge Shirley Hufstedler, who was appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1968 by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson. She was the first woman to serve as a judge on the Court of Appeals.
“If there was a vacancy,” he told Williams, “Huffsteller was the frontrunner in my mind.”
Carter also selected Hufstedler for another role: the nation’s first Secretary of Education.
“If I had been appointed to the Supreme Court, she was the person I had in mind for the job,” Carter said.
Instead, Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, nominated Sandra Day O’Connor, the nation’s first female Supreme Court Justice, in 1981.
Jimmy Carter dies at 100 years old
Jimmy Carter, Rosalynn Carter and their children at the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection, Getty Images)
Although President Carter did not directly appoint Supreme Court justices as president, two of the appellate court nominees will continue to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom he selected to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals. Carter was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Both were appointed to the Supreme Court by former President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, and were later replaced by female jurists. Breyer will retire in 2022 and be replaced by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s only nominee for the court. Ginsburg passed away in September 2020 and was replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Mr. Carter is expected to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (AP Photo/Carolyn Custer/File)
Ginsburg was praised for her pioneering research on sexism. When nominating her to the Supreme Court in 1993, Clinton praised Ginsburg as “to the women’s movement what Thurgood Marshall was to the African American rights movement.”
In public speeches, Ginsburg often praised Carter’s work on judicial reform.
“Until Jimmy Carter became president, there were few women in Congress,” Ginsburg said in a 2015 speech at the American Constitution Society.
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Carter “deserves tremendous credit for that,” she said.
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