Michelle Friedland, a former clerk for Justice O’Connor and lawyer at Munger, Tolles & Olson, was just nominated to the Ninth Circuit. I know Michelle and think very highly of her — she’s an excellent lawyer, and I think she’d make an excellent judge.
As with Paul Watford — whose resume reads a lot like hers, down to the Munger partnership — she’s liberal, but I suspect that all of President Obama’s California nominees are going to be liberal. (Maybe in some states the Senators can push the Administration’s nominees a bit to the right, but of course not in California.) Fortunately, for the great bulk of Court of Appeals cases, intelligence, work ethic, and collegiality are much more important than ideology, and I think Michelle would shine on those scores. And I suspect her experience practicing business law at Munger has exposed her to enough of the problems that business faces in the legal system that she’ll deal with business law cases in a sensible way. I very much hope she is quickly confirmed.