My court is pretty well agreed that this is the end of the 9th Circuit. Even my liberal Democratic wife, who graduated from Boalt (UC Berkeley's law school) agrees. We also agree that the split will take the form of putting all the bad eggs in one basket and dropping the basket, i.e., put the most reversed judges in the California part of the split and then not appoint new ones for a long time. The latter idea is to let retirement attrition reduce the number of appellate judges in the new California circuit, so the remainder's caseload soars. That will reduce their ability to do further damage, including by having their caseload be disproportionately criminal appeals.
IMO no new judges for the California circuit should be appointed until all or almost all of the original idiots have gone on "senior" status - no regularly assigned cases - at which time none of the new appointees should be federal district judges, and instead consist only of state court judges (mostly California state appellate courts) or lawyers with no judicial experience. The latter idea is to entirely destroy the old 9th Circuit's dysfunctional institutional culture. Appointing new California circuit court judges from the district court bench would tend to perpetuate the 9th's institutional culture, and so the federal district bench here should not have any upward mobility for at least 20 years.
Bumb for Billybob's input.
I like that idea. I'm glad your wife thinks it's inevitable, too.