As 2021 draws to a close, President Joe Biden has good reason to be frustrated. His legislative agenda is stymied in the Senate. His executive authority is under assault from Donald Trump’s judges. His administration was blindsided, again, by a spiraling COVID surge, this time with omicron. But there is one front on which Biden has a near-perfect score: judicial nominations. Over the past year, the White House has put forth slate after slate of diverse, well-qualified, progressive nominees—and the Senate has swiftly confirmed them. Biden’s breakneck pace, combined with his choice of nontraditional judges, has shattered too many records to count. No, the president has not loosened Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the Supreme Court. But his transformation of the lower courts will still have a profound impact on American law for decades to come.

There are two defining features of Biden’s push to remake the federal judiciary: speed and diversity. Let’s start with speed. In his first year, just 19 of Trump’s […]