Merry Christmas, Mr. President!

The Senate has approved 76 federal court of appeals and district court judges so far this year. Confirmation of 12 more would bring this year's total to 88 — the most since a Democratic-led Senate approved 99 of President Bill Clinton's appeals and district court nominees in 1994, according to Russell Wheeler, who studies the judiciary at the Brookings Institution.

Whatever this year's figure, it will easily surpass the 43 approved last year and the 49 confirmed in 2012. Majority Democrats enabled that in November 2013, when they muscled through a weakening of the Senate's rules on filibusters, the procedural delays that minority parties have long used to sink nominations and bills they dislike.

The 88 judges would mean the Senate would have confirmed 303 federal appeals and district court judges through Obama's six years in office, according to Wheeler. That would be more than the 298 confirmed during Clinton's first six years and the 253 confirmed during that same period under President George W. Bush.

Such numbers will let Obama put his imprint on the federal judiciary, though judges don't always follow the political ideology of the president who picked them.

Currently, there are 50 federal appeals and district court vacancies out of 856 judgeships, according to data from the U.S. court system. That's the lowest number of vacancies since December 2008, the month before Obama took office. Vacancies during his presidency peaked at 108 in December 2010.

Another measure of Obama's impact is on federal appeals courts, which have enormous influence on their regions of the country and can be conduits for cases to reach the Supreme Court. When he took office, 10 of the 13 appeals courts had more judges appointed by Republican than Democratic presidents. Now the balance has switched, with Democratic-appointed majorities on nine of the courts.

Most significantly, that includes the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia circuit, considered the nation's second-most powerful court because its jurisdiction includes actions by the White House and federal agencies.