Many of her cases involved representation of plan participants who had lost their individual account pensions due to fiduciary breaches, often concurrent with corporate scandals.

[1][4] On August 6, 2009, President Barack Obama announced that he had nominated Stranch to a vacancy on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey, who assumed senior status on January 1, 2009.

Stranch was one of several candidates whom NashvillePost.com had reported in April 2009 was being considered for the seat, along with United States District Judge William Joseph Haynes Jr., United States District Judge Bernice B. Donald, Nashville criminal defense attorney David Raybin and Vanderbilt University Law School Professor Lisa Schultz Bressman.

[10] In United States v. Edward L. Young, the Sixth Circuit considered whether a mandatory 15-year sentence, as required under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) constituted cruel and unusual punishment for a convicted felon who possessed seven shotgun shells.

[11] But Judge Stranch wrote a concurrence to express her view on mandatory minimum sentencing: "I therefore join the continuous flood of voices expressing concern that the ACCA and other mandatory minimum laws are ineffective in achieving their purpose and damaging to our federal criminal justice system and our nation.