This chapter describes the historical evolution and development of the president's Article II appointment power with respect to the federal judiciary. It outlines the institutional dynamics of presidential nomination and senatorial advice and consent in confirmation. The constitutional framework is presented as the formal baseline from which and within which presidential discretion and leadership can operate. The chapter briefly discusses the mileposts, both historical and systemic, in the development of the formal dimensions of the judicial appointment power. The relationship between the presidency and the federal judiciary is not among the most copiously delineated in the constitutional system of separation of powers and checks and balances. Regional conflict, the division between agrarian slave and commercial free states, and the coming Civil War between the secessionist South and the unionist North, would of course make presidential considerations for geographical balance in staffing the federal judiciary seem rather quaint.