Perhaps when discussing items of moral importance and life or death judgments it may be of historical/cultural reference but a copyright conflict seems rather out of bounds for such detail.
The Circuits ordinarily hear cases in 3-judge panels (occasionally cases are heard en banc, where more/all of the circuit judges will hear the case). The outcome of a large number of cases can be predicted based upon the composition of the panel.
So where "conservative" judges make up 2/3 or 3/3 of the panel, you tend to see "conservative" (read: pro-business, pro-prosecution) outcomes and vice-versa with "liberal" judges.
It could be coincidence, but as someone who has followed circuit opinions for years, the panel composition has corresponded with the ultimate outcome a surprising number of times. (N.B. it would be interesting to statistically track the panel composition/outcome metric to see how often the correlation actually exists).
Most judges I think do see themselves as impartial jurists even if the results tend to skew toward political outcomes.
imho, this is the "rubber hits the road" context. if we want our opinions of appointments to be grounded in... well... reality, then we should maybe care less about appointments when they're abstractly happening and we're horse-betting, and think MORE about them when they're ruling.
Frankly, I'm confused how you're thinking about this, such that you would think someone WOULDN'T appreciate having this inline. Do you think politics are some dirty thing that we should become amnesiac about as soon as someone is executing their duties...? Sorry, I'm just confused. Can you explain the foundational belief underpinning your comment?
Supposed to be, but in many cases is not, which is why those details are important.
And I don't think this is an abstract hypothetical; I've seen an increasing number of people in recent years dismiss even the aspiration to a nonpartisan judiciary as silly and naive.
This might seem obvious, but: if copyright is within the scope of the court, then it's within the scope of the appointment. Therefore, it's relevant.
Of course they could still be biased say, in favor of those with power and capital. But since in practice, both political parties bow to capital with effectively equal deference, such a bias wouldn't surface by merely listing out which president appointed whom.
The scope of free speech protections (and, on the other side, the scope of personal property rights as well) is a matter of moral importance, moreover the scope of free speech protections is a matter on which there is particularly active current controversy in which a sharp partisan divide on the issue is part of a central political narrative, and this is a significant factor in modern American politics.
If you did a survey, I would believe public opinion to be closer to "judges are partisan and always decide along ideological lines" than reality.
With that assumption, mentions of who appointed judges when writing about their decisions would also work against public cynicism on this issue.
Unless, of course, people somehow manage to give more weight to evidence confirming their biases than evidence against.
There are people that would question a court's validity more if some midwestern appeals circuit had 3 Trump appointees reversing an opinion, just like there are other people that would raise an eyebrow at anything the ninth circuit rules.
So they list who was appointed by whom.