This Thanksgiving, with wars overseas and fears heightening over the potential return to office of a would-be autocrat, it may feel as if there’s not much to be thankful for on the political front. However, President Joe Biden and the U.S. Senate deserve gratitude for a major success of his first three years in office: judicial appointments. Indeed, one of Biden’s greatest domestic successes has been to revitalize and improve smooth, fair processes to nominate and confirm well-qualified, mainstream judicial candidates who are diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ideology, and experience. When campaigning for president and governing since the election, Biden pledged to enhance selection by restoring and improving certain nomination and confirmation rules and customs that former President Donald Trump and two GOP Senate majorities had severely undercut. Biden also promised to counter his predecessor’s appointment of three extremely ideologically conservative justices, 54 similar circuit judges, and 178 comparatively analogous district jurists, even as Trump left 50 district vacancies, by confirming a diverse set of nominees. The president has honored these vows since January 2021.