Who are the judges hearing the appeal?

The panel that will hear arguments about Donald. J. Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution in the election subversion case includes a Republican appointee who is no stranger to cases involving the former president, along with two fairly recent Democratic appointees.

Judge Karen L. Henderson, a graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School, joined the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1990. She was nominated by President George HW Bush and is one of the few Republican appointees. In other cases involving Mr. Trump, she has generally been more willing than many of her colleagues to govern in ways favorable to him.

In November 2019, Judge Henderson dissented from an 8-3 ruling by the full appeals court that Mr. Trump’s accounting firm must turn over eight years of his financial records to Congress. She was also part of a panel that ruled in February 2020 that Trump’s former White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, was immune from a subpoena to testify before the House of Representatives; several months later the full court overturned that decision.

And in June 2020, Judge Henderson was part of a panel that ordered a district court judge to immediately dismiss a case against Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. That would have blocked the district court’s plan to investigate the circumstances under which the Trump-era Justice Department sought dismissal of the case, even though Mr. Flynn had pleaded guilty. The full Court of Appeal also reversed that decision over her objections.

In August 2022, Judge Henderson joined in a ruling that dealt Mr. Trump a setback: It gave the House access to Mr. Trump’s tax records. But in a separate opinion, she expressed concern about “the potential and incentive of Congress to threaten a sitting president with a post-presidency request for tax returns” to influence the president while in office.

The remaining judges on the panel, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Y. Pan, are too new to have played a major role in previous Trump-related cases. Both were appointed to the appeals court by President Biden in 2022, despite having extensive legal experience in lower courts.

Judge Childs served as a state court judge and a federal district court judge in South Carolina. She attracted national attention in 2022 for being on a shortlist of potential nominees to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, although Mr Biden ultimately chose Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson instead.

Supporters of Judge Childs touted experiences that would have added even more diversity to the court: a blue-collar background and a degree from the University of South Carolina law school. Some progressive groups criticized the fact that she had once worked for a law firm that defended employers in cases of employee discrimination and sexual harassment.

For her part, Judge Pan served as a judge in the equivalent state court system for the District of Columbia from 2009 to 2021. In 2016, President Barack Obama tried to elevate her to the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. but Senate Republicans did not act on her nomination and it stalled.

Judge Pan has been promoted twice in the wake of Judge Jackson. In 2021, when Judge Jackson was elevated to the DC Circuit by the Federal District Court, Judge Pan filled the subsequent vacancy. And in 2022, after Judge Jackson was confirmed by the Supreme Court, Judge Pan intervened again, this time to fill the DC Circuit seat.

Judge Pan, a child of Taiwanese immigrants, is the first Asian American woman to serve on the D.C. Circuit. She graduated from Stanford Law School and clerked for two Republican-appointed federal judges in New York. Before becoming a judge, she served in various government positions, including ten years as a federal prosecutor.