CNN
—

Jimmy Carter, who served a single full term as president without having the chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice, nevertheless left behind an unparalleled legal legacy.

He was the first president to significantly diversify the lower federal courts by appointing women and minority justices, a point often touted by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Carter appointed Ginsburg to a key U.S. appeals court based in Washington in 1980, which enabled her to later be appointed to the Supreme Court.

According to a compilation of judicial appointments by the Congressional Research Service, his presidency was the first in which women provided a significant number of confirmed nominees to circuit and district courts. During his term as president, 41 of his appointees were women.

12 of its 59 appointed district judges and 29 of its 203 total appointed district judges were women. Until Carter’s term, only two women had been appointed as district judges and six as county judges.

“Once Carter appointed numerous women to the bench, there was no turning back,” Ginsburg, who died in 2020, said in a speech.

Ginsburg recalled past opposition to women on the bench, adding that when former President Harry Truman, who served from 1945 to 1953, raised the possibility of a woman on the court, the justices reportedly said “a woman as a justice.” would make it difficult for (the other judges) to meet informally, wearing robes and perhaps shoes without their shirt collars unbuttoned, to discuss their problems and make decisions.”

In addition to the 41 women judges Carter appointed to the federal judiciary, he appointed a record 57 people of color to the bench, including those who would become prominent federal appeals judges such as Leon Higginbotham of the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia; Amalya Kearse of New York’s 2nd Circuit; and Damon Keith on the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit.

Civil rights activists praised Carter’s work for bringing diversity to the bench. But it was also, in the words of Sherrilyn Ifill, a law professor at Howard University and former director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, “important in improving the legitimacy and quality of the verdict.”

Carter downplayed his role in breaking barriers, saying, “The nation was ready for this.”

Yet Carter never received the opportunity to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. He is the only one-term president to complete a full term without being appointed. However, his emphasis on appointing female and minority justices may have increased pressure on Ronald Reagan when he ran against Carter in 1980 and promised to appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court.

Reagan made that vow in October 1980, telling an audience in Los Angeles, “One of the first Supreme Court vacancies of my administration will be filled by the most qualified woman I can find.”

At the time, Carter dismissed the promise as a cynical electoral ploy, saying: “Equal rights for women means more than just a job for a woman.”

A few months after Reagan won the White House in 1981, he made good on his promise and nominated Sandra Day O’Connor.

The second woman named by President Bill Clinton in 1993 was Ginsburg, Carter’s previous appeals court pick.