Obama-appointed federal judges make the courts a lot less pale and male

President Obama has not only had 305 district and circuit court judges confirmed over the past six years, he has added significant diversity to the courts through his choices:

Among the 12 confirmed in the final hours of the Senate's session,

Robert Pitman will be the first openly gay judge to serve in the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Loretta Biggs will be the first black woman to serve as a district judge in North Carolina.

Whether Obama's judges reshape the judiciary ideologically in the way that many of George W. Bush's judges have is another question entirely, but they at least shift the balance away from those Bush judges and ensure that a wider range of experience is represented in our courts.