…The senior judges “have really tilted this court and given this court an ideological balance of 9-5” favoring Republican appointees, not counting the three pending Obama nominees, said Judith E. Schaeffer, vice president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center. She said some of the court’s senior judges, such as former Chief Judge David B. Sentelle, are “really extreme conservatives who have issued very, very activist rulings.”… 

…“These are very active senior judges,” said Schaeffer, who noted in a September article that Republican-appointed senior judges have made up the majority in several high-profile cases recently, including one in which the court struck down the contraception mandate in the 2010 health care overhaul (PL 111-148, PL 111-152) as an infringement on business owners’ religious liberty….