What GOP control of the Senate could mean for Obama's judicial legacy If Republicans take the Senate in the midterm elections - as this model, and this one, and this one, and this one predict - President Obama won't simply lose whatever control he's had over his agenda in Congress. He'll also lose much of his power to push through Congress the judicial nominees who give any president an influence over policy that far outlasts his time in office. Judicial appointments, which currently require a majority of votes in the Senate, are one area in which Obama has been able to work around the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. And over the last six years, Obama has had a massive impact on the judiciary around the country, making it both more diverse and more liberal than it was before he entered office. At the end of the Bush era, Republican-appointed judges made up the majority of all but one of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Today, Democratic-appointed judges hold the majority on nine of 13 of those powerful courts. A majority of Obama's appointees, meanwhile, have been either women or minorities, nudging federal courts a little closer to the demographic makeup of the country. According to Sheldon Goldman, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 42 percent of Obama's appointment have been women (compared to 22 percent for George W. Bush). And 36 percent have been minorities (18 percent were for Bush). Conservative jurists may currently hold sway over the Supreme Court. But today, thanks to Obama, judges appointed by Democratic presidents now outnumber judges appointed by Republicans across the country. If Republicans take control of the Senate, and the Judiciary Committee, they'll no doubt try to curb Obama's efforts in his last two years to further cement his legacy on the courts. That won't be hard, as Sahil Kapur points out in Talking Points Memo. Until now, Republicans in the Senate have had to wield delays and filibusters to stymie nominees. Now all they'll have to do is refuse to schedule their hearings. The result, warns University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, is that control of the Senate will have broad policy implications even if you think general legislative gridlock will just look like more of the same: If the Republicans control the Senate, you can be sure that many fewer Obama nominees will be confirmed, and that those who do win confirmation will be much less progressive than the judges this White House has managed to appoint in its first six years. This will have a lasting and important impact on the federal judiciary for decades to come. And these days, judges appointed by the left and the right often hold widely diverging views on everything from abortion, to voting rights, gun control, religious liberty and the future of the Affordable Care Act. In a New Yorker article last week, Jeffrey Toobin points out that Obama's healthcare law has already benefited from changes in the makeup of the D.C. Circuit Court since he took office. The full court, which is set next month to hear arguments on a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, now includes seven Democratic appointees. When Obama took office, a majority of the judges on the court had been appointed by Republicans. That one case illustrates how incremental change among judicial appointees - with the right timing - can heavily influence policy outcomes. And a number of important issues are likely to soon come before the courts around voting rights, gay marriage (where the right still hasn't been decided) and women's access to abortion to contraception.