Originally, this "By the Numbers" analysis was intended to provide a brief overview of some basic facts and statistics regarding the federal judiciary. But then it started to take on a life of its own, so I decided to break it into separate installments. 

In Part 1, I shared a breakdown of the Supreme Court and the ratio of unanimous decisions to party-line decisions. I also provided a breakdown of the number of federal district court judges and appellate court judges appointed by each party/president.

READ MORE: 

By the Numbers: Some Surprising (and Not-Surprising) Stats 
About the Federal Judiciary (Part 1)

Because so much of the focus of late has been on the litigation challenging executive actions taken by President Donald Trump, and because so many of those suits have been filed in the D.C. District Court, I thought it might be useful to take a deeper dive into the makeup of that court. We'll also look at the distribution of these cases among the various active judges on the court. 

So, let's take a closer look at the D.C. District: 

Takeaways/Notes: 

Given that there are 24 active judges in the D.C. Circuit, why do some of the same names seem to be cropping up in relation to the high-profile cases? This perception has prompted some to wonder if cases truly are randomly assigned, or if, instead, certain cases are getting assigned to certain judges (and/or certain judges are seeking out specific cases) in order to further an agenda. 

Well, let's take a look at the actual case distribution. To start, I need to include some caveats:

That said, I'm counting 186 cases filed in the D.C. District Court challenging the Trump administration/executive actions since January 20, 2025. Simple math tells you that with 186 cases and 24 active judges, each judge should have maybe 6-9 of these cases, assuming they're randomly and fairly evenly distributed. 

So, let's see what we have, taking the judges in chronological (length of time served) order:

Obviously, there's a fair amount of variation as to the number of these cases assigned to each judge. Most of the judges who have fewer than six cases are senior status judges (the exception being Sparkle Sooknanan, with four, but she's also the newest judge, having just been sworn in on January 2). 

I suspect one of the big surprises is that Judge Boasberg also only has five of the cases. Obviously, he is notoriously associated with the J.G.G. v. Trump Alien Enemies Act/TdA case. He's also presiding over the American Oversight v. Hegseth case (a FOIA request over Signalgate). The other three cases are also FOIA cases, but there haven't been any significant rulings on those yet.  

It is rather interesting that Judge Lamberth, the most senior judge on the court, has so many. However, there's a great deal of issue overlap in the cases he's handling. Four of his 11 involve the housing of transgender inmates; six involve the defunding/dismantling of the U.S. Agency for Global Media; and one is a FOIA request case. 

Let's look at the other judges who each have 10 or 11 of the Trump administration cases assigned to them:

So, it appears that the judges who have more cases assigned to them tend to have multiple cases that have overlapping issues, and thus, the cases are related if not consolidated — and in Judge Cobb's case, two of the cases are already closed (voluntarily dismissed). Judge Kelly's assigned cases seem to be the most diverse in nature — to the extent it matters, he is a Trump appointee. 

In other words, while I do think there are fair questions about how Judge Boasberg ended up with the J.G.G. case, overall, the only discernible patterns regarding case assignments are that the most senior and most junior have fewer, and the judges who have the most cases assigned to them tend to have cases that lend themselves to being grouped together. 

Okay, now we get to the crux of the matter — how are the D.C. District Court judges ruling? Is the Trump administration getting a fair shake in any of these cases? Or is it all just "chronic injunctivitis," as Professor Jonathan Turley has observed? We'll take a closer look at the rulings issued thus far in Part 3 of this series. 

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