Waking up on November 6, Americans found that the political status quo had once again been upset, thanks to the reelection of Donald Trump. In winning both the popular and electoral votes, Trump, the first convicted felon to be elected president, had defied political odds and the judicial system. In the days that followed, political commentators took stock of the tectonic shifts, prophesying that a second Trump term would be dramatically more polarizing. With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, the balance of power in the federal government is tipped in their favor. The only remaining question is how the judiciary will respond to a new Republican agenda.

It seems ironic that, in a system that has failed to uphold justice by allowing Donald Trump to run for president after being convicted of crimes, that any hope would remain in the judicial system to resist encroachments on others’ liberties. Yet for many liberals hoping to maintain a check on Trump’s policies, it may be their best chance.

The Supreme Court is dominated by a conservative majority thanks to Trump’s appointments. It was this court’s majority that enabled Trump’s reelection by granting him extensive immunity for crimes committed while in office. At the federal circuit court level, however, the question of legal influence is much less predictable. Although Trump appointed dozens of judges to the benches of the federal courts, the various circuit courts of the U.S. remain ideologically diverse.

Perhaps the most notable case of a federal circuit court making consistent challenges to the Trump agenda is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As the largest federal appellate court, with over 29 active judges, the Ninth Circuit holds significant influence over federal policy and has played a crucial role in major court cases dating back to the early twentieth century.

With a jurisdiction over the West Coast states of California, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii—20 percent of the total population—and headquartered in San Francisco, the Ninth Circuit’s geographical location has led conservative media to characterize the Ninth Circuit Court as left-leaning, like the city where it is based.

The media’s portrayals of the Ninth Circuit Court as a liberal institution are not totally unfounded. The liberal traditions of the Ninth Circuit go back long before our current political moment. In fact, the Ninth Circuit has a long liberal history since it was created by Congress in 1891. Over the course of many decades, it has issued dozens of landmark rulings on issues regarding civil liberties, free speech, and desegregation.

The liberal trend on the court can be traced to the mid-twentieth century. Among the individuals who defined the court then was Justice William Denman, who sat on the court from the 1930s to the 1950s and presided over it as chief justice from 1948 to 1957. Denman was a member of the San Francisco political elite; his father was a San Francisco city supervisor and the father of San Francisco’s public school system. A distant relative of San Francisco mayor James Phelan, Denman spent his early political career as a Democratic official in the Wilson........

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