In a recent Federalist post, Shapiro observes that, “The year just past was a big one for judges.” Part of this, of course, was Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court, but such an appointment, he notes, was to be expected given that Trump won “in significant part because voters decided that [his] list of Supreme Court potentials was better than what they could expect from Hillary Clinton.” In Shapiro’s view, however, what happened in the lower courts came as a pleasant surprise:

Few would’ve predicted the record number of circuit court confirmations (12) or total nominees (68), or their quality (a few overly publicized weak spots notwithstanding). This presidential administration has surpassed even George W. Bush’s well-oiled machine for selecting committed and youthful originalists and textualists, and getting them through the Senate. …

Lower-court judges … were real wildcards. If a constitutional lawyer who had been president of the Harvard Law Review deprioritized judicial nominations—Obama made relatively few his first term, and especially his first year—how much would a celebrity real-estate developer care? Would Trump see these as patronage posts for his casino lawyers and other JDs he encountered in the entertainment world? Would he just focus on immigration and trade and let the judiciary erode away?

As it turns out, the president took door number three: defer entirely to his counsel, Don McGahn, a libertarian-minded political lawyer who has been taking advice from the Federalist Society (of which he and most of his team are members) and other conservative legal elites.

The result has been … the same kind and caliber as those conservative-constitutionalist presidential candidate Ted Cruz would have come up with—and probably better than Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney picks. This was made possible by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who eliminated filibusters for lower-court (and executive) nominees in 2013, a decade after he initiated partisan judicial filibusters for the first time ever. …

It’s a shame that quality nominees are confirmed only on party-line votes, but we’ve gotten here … because we’re at the culmination of a long trend whereby divergent interpretive theories map onto ideologically sorted parties.

Judicial nominations are properly an election issue, so it’s heartening that voters are paying attention. Federal judges are a big deal: deciding many more cases than the Supreme Court and nominated for life, thus carrying certain legal-policy views long beyond the term of the president who appointed them. It’s understandable that, given these stakes, senators try to advance or block as many judges as possible. …

But that’s the way the game has to be played: a Senate minority can still delay nominations—for now—without stopping them altogether, but a Senate majority is the ultimate whip hand. It’s not hard to understand, so maybe people are finally coming around to the idea that, even and especially for judges, elections have consequences.