The U.S. Senate voted Monday to approve the nomination of San Francisco lawyer Michelle Friedland to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. With Friedland’s confirmation on a 51-40 vote, the highest federal court to serve California will be fully staffed for the first time in decades.

Friedland is a Stanford Law School grad who works with Munger, Tolles & Olson. Her expertise is in antitrust and higher education litigation, but she also worked pro bono on the legal challenge to California’s anti-gay marriage measure Proposition 8.

University of Richmond Law School professor Carl Tobias calls Friedland “extremely well qualified” — so much so that retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor showed up at her confirmation hearing. Friedland clerked for the nation’s first female justice when she was on the high court.

It’s been a long time since the nation’s busiest appeals court has been fully staffed. How long? Tobias says “maybe as far back as the Reagan administration.” At times, as many as a third of the seats were vacant due to partisan battles between the White House and the Senate. Tobias says the 9th became one of the slowest appeals courts in the country, with a case load that overwhelmed the judges.

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