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"There is just no question about the importance of the appellate courts, because so few decisions get up to the Supreme Court," said a Democratic Senate source who spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama has not been inaugurated.

The Senate confirms presidential nominees to the 179-judge federal circuit courts and the 678-judge U.S. District Courts. The circuit courts of appeals, which cover the nation's 13 federal judicial circuits, decide more than 30,000 cases a year. The Supreme Court takes fewer than 100 new cases each year.

Control of the appellate courts has shifted with the party in power. Republicans controlled 64 percent of appellate judgeships in 1993, but President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, reduced that to 42 percent by 2001. Bush's appointees have restored a 56 percent Republican majority of the total authorized judgeships.

With current and future vacancies and Congress likely to pass a bill to create 14 appellate judgeships, Obama is likely to reduce Republican appointees to 42 percent and boost Democrats from the 36 percent to 58 percent during his first term, said Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution scholar who studies federal courts. The bill would also create 52 federal district judgeships, although those judges are more bound by precedent and party affiliation matters less.

An immediate priority for Democrats will be filling the four vacancies on the 4th Circuit, which covers Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas and has long been considered one of the nation's most conservative courts. The court has issued forceful conservative rulings, including striking down a law allowing rape victims to sue their attackers, and supported the Bush administration in key national security cases involving terrorism defendants and so-called enemy combatants.

But vacancies have whittled the court's Republican majority to 6-5, with some Republicans faulting the Bush administration for moving too slowly to nominate replacements and others blaming Democratic obstructionism. "Conservatives thought of the 4th Circuit as Shangri-La, and it's very frustrating that it's on the verge of going to the other side," said Manuel Miranda, chairman of the conservative Third Branch Conference and a former top Republican Senate lawyer.

Democrats will probably also gain control of the 2nd Circuit, which hears important terrorism and business cases, with the nation's financial markets based in New York. It is split 6-6 between Democratic and Republican nominees, with one vacancy. But the judgeship bill sponsored in the last Congress by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) would give Democrats two more seats to fill.

Senate Democratic sources would not say whether the bill would be reintroduced, but Republicans and legal experts expect it to pass in the next year or two because Obama can appoint the new judges.

The 3rd Circuit, which is divided 6-6, also will move to Democratic control. There are two vacancies and two more positions possibly coming in the judgeship bill.

The smaller 1st Circuit, which mainly covers New Engand, will gain a narrow Democratic majority if the judgeship bill passes, and the Southern-based 11th Circuit stands to become even more narrowly divided. In the short term, Republicans are expected to keep control of six other circuits, with Democrats slightly expanding their dominance of the one circuit they now control, the California-based 9th Circuit.

But scholars and activists are paying close attention to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District, which hears appeals of key executive branch rulings and prominent criminal cases, such as the recent corruption trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

The court has six Republican nominees, compared with three Democrats, and two vacancies. "The D.C. Circuit is so influential," said one Democratic Senate aide. "It's out of whack now, and we can restore the balance."

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.