This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on May 9, 2023.
You can certainly find good judges making good rulings here and there, but the judges appointed by Democratic presidents, including Biden, have maintained this blind spot when it comes to corporate power. This is a product of a system that has been set up to funnel a certain kind of person onto the federal bench.
Judges are selected by a combination of recommendations from congressional Democrats and the White House counsel’s office. Democrats in Congress have recommendation committees that are typically overrun with corporate lawyers, who pick from a pool of elite friends and those with the right credentials. Among the public defenders and civil rights lawyers Biden has chosen are also union-busting labor attorneys, corporate BigLaw partners, and immigration prosecutors. As of last year, Biden had only nominated two people with labor or economic justice backgrounds to federal courts, according to the Alliance for Justice.