Private: Who is Alice Batchelder?

Now that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination, President Bush soon will nominate another individual to succeed Justice O'Connor.#160; One reported candidate for Justice O'Connor's seat is Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Judge Batchelder was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1944.#160; She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1964, after which she taught English in junior high and high school.#160; She then attended Akron University School of Law, where she graduated at the top of her class in 1971 and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.#160; Judge Batchelder's husband, Bill, served in the Ohio House of Representatives for thirty years and served on the Ohio Ninth District Court of Appeals until September 30, 2005.
After law school, Judge Batchelder went into private practice in Medina, Ohio, for 12 years, after which she became a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge.#160; She was then nominated by President Reagan to the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in 1985.#160; During her tenure on the District Court, Judge Batchelder earned an LL.M. from the University of Virginia School of Law.
On June 12, 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated Judge Batchelder to a seat on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.#160; She has served on that court for fourteen years and is highly regarded within the circuit for her intellect and sense of humor.
Peter W. Schramm, Executive Director of the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs and Professor of Political Science at Ashland University, praises Batchelder as an "avid student of some of the latest scholarship in fields like law and economics, but does not commit the jurisprudential errors of someone like Judge Posner, who has suggested that economic policy may trump legislative judgments." He adds, "Given her scholarship, it should come as little surprise that she has written some of the most significant precedents in her circuit on complicated issues like intellectual property and antitrust law. And given her knowledge of the Federalist debates, it should be of little surprise that she has a well-formed view of the judiciary role within our constitutional order."
It was rumored that Alice Batchelder was on the Administration's short list at some point, but, according Fox News's Brit Hume, her name was removed for a record of "judicial activism." "I can tell you this about Alice Batchelder. She was very, very closely vetted. And you know what they found? They found all kinds of evidence of activism in her record. And they were quite surprised and not pleased to find that," said Hume.
Judicial Philosophy:In a speech to the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University last month, Judge Batchelder described her view of the judge's role in our Constitutional order:

The judge's job is not to determine the preferred policy outcome, but to determine whether the claim falls inside or outside the scope of the Constitution.#160; And this, I would submit to you, is a narrow function.#160; There have been a lot of times in my years as a judge when I didn't like the outcome that the law required, but it was not my place to substitute my policy choice for that of the legislators who drafted those law, to impose will instead of judgment,