To hear President Bush tell it, you would think he’s been stymied in his efforts to put a conservative imprint on the federal judiciary, what with the constant “obstructionism” from Senate Democrats. But in fact, Bush-appointed judges already have made their mark on the courts, and before he’s through in 2008, they could unleash a groundswell of conservative jurisprudence that we have not seen in nearly a century.

So far, the Senate has confirmed 39 Bush nominees to federal courts of appeal around the country, helping to create or solidify Republican majorities on all but three of the 12 regional courts. And evidence shows that Bush’s judges already are tilting the scales significantly in a conservative direction.

A new study by nonpartisan academics indicates that Bush’s judges turn out to be more conservative on civil rights, civil liberties, and worker and consumer protections when compared not only with Democratic appointees but also with judges named by previous Republican presidents.

Robert Carp, a professor at the University of Houston, and co-authors Ronald Stidham of Appalachian State University and Kenneth Manning of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, used the common definition of liberals as more protective of individual rights (and conservatives as less so) in their analysis of more than 75,000 opinions published from federal courts since 1933.

By their count, Bush’s judges issued liberal rulings or opinions in 33 percent of their nearly 800 decisions in the study. That was predictably lower than the figures for judges named by Democratic presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. But it was also lower than the scores for judges named by Richard M. Nixon (38 percent), Ronald Reagan (36 percent) or the elder George Bush (37 percent).

“There’s been a quiet, silent revolution going on,” Carp said in an interview. “If you’re a conservative, you’re going to say, ‘Thank God.’ If you’re a liberal, you’re going to put your hands over your head and say it’s a nightmare.”

Conservative activists discount this kind of analysis. “There’s no evidence that the current president’s judges are more politically conservative,” says Sean Rushton, executive director of the pro-Bush Committee for Justice. Bush’s judges may be more “legally conservative,” he says. But he and other conservatives maintain that protecting individual rights too often amounts to activism instead of the judicial restraint and deference that most Americans favor.

Rushton slides over some examples of hard-line conservatives Bush has named to the federal bench. As Alabama attorney general, William H. Pryor Jr. was an outspoken opponent of abortion rights and gay rights before being appointed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004 (he was confirmed last June). Former White House lawyer Jay Bybee wrote the now disavowed memorandum claiming a presidential power to authorize torture before his confirmation to a seat on the 9th Circuit in 2003.

Too often, Bush’s judges display a political slant in deciding when to exercise judicial restraint and when not. Bybee, for example, voted in dissent in 2004 to strike down a “living wage” ordinance enacted by the city of Berkeley, Calif. Two Bush appointees on the 5th Circuit voted, also in dissent, to limit the scope of the Endangered Species Act. With more Bush judges, dissenting opinions like those could become majority rulings, making federal courts a graveyard for legislative initiatives as they were in the early 20th century.

As seen in reports by the liberal group People for the American Way, Bush’s appellate judges often vote to make it harder for people claiming the protection of federal anti-discrimination laws to get their cases before a jury. Bush’s judges, the group believes, “are already threatening the rights of ordinary Americans.” And with more Bush appointees, women, minorities, people with disabilities and others could become victims of judges actively working to restrain the enforcement of federal civil rights laws.

Bush campaigned even more explicitly than previous GOP presidential candidates on a platform of trying to remake the federal bench. He pursued his strategy by turning over the screening of judicial candidates to the conservative Federalist Society and other like-minded interest groups. He also eliminated the American Bar Association’s decades-long role in prescreening nominees — a bugaboo for conservatives ever since the group’s mixed verdict on failed Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork in 1987.

Carp says his study has no political motive. “I’m just calling it the way the data calls it,” he says. He also has no fault with the Bush judges’ qualifications. “These are polished judges who’ve gotten good ratings from the ABA,” he says.

But make no mistake, Carp suggests, about the direction of the federal bench. With two Bush-appointed justices, the Supreme Court may be shifting to the right — giving lower-court judges that much more room to move in the same direction. “If the Supreme Court starts to change,” Carp says, “I think you’ve got a lot of district court judges who are chomping at the bit.”

Kenneth Jost is the Supreme Court editor for CQ Press.