Anthony M. Kennedy

• Born: 23 July 1936
• Birthplace: Sacramento, California
• Best Known As:

  Reagan-appointed Californian on the bench since 1988

Anthony McCleod Kennedy was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by President Ronald Reagan and took a seat on the bench in February of 1988. A native Californian, Kennedy grew up working in oil fields and tagging along with his dad, a Sacramento attorney and lobbyist. A graduate of Stanford University (1958) and Harvard Law School (1961), he served in the National Guard and began his career in a San Francisco law firm. He took over his father's practice in 1963 and worked as an attorney and law professor at McGeorge Law School, until being named to the federal bench in 1975 by President Gerald Ford (at the suggestion of then-governor Reagan). While at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Kennedy earned a reputation as a fair jurist and a loyal conservative Republican. He was not Reagan's first choice to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by Lewis Powell; Kennedy was picked after Robert Bork could not get confirmed and after Douglas Ginsburg withdrew. Since being on the high court he has frequently cast the deciding vote, sometimes voting with liberals, sometimes with conservatives.

Kennedy was 38 when he became a federal judge.

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For more information on Anthony McLeod Kennedy, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Sacramento, Calif., 23 July 1936), associate justice, 1988–. Justice Kennedy's parents, Anthony and Gladys Kennedy, were an economically comfortable, middle‐class professional family of the Roman Catholic faith. His undergraduate education combined work at Stanford University and the London School of Economics. After receiving his B.A. from Stanford in 1958, Kennedy studied at Harvard University Law School. Upon receiving his degree cum laude in 1961, he became an associate in the San Francisco law firm of Thelen, Marrin, John, and Bridges. He returned to Sacramento to private practice as a partner in the firm of Evans, Jackson, and Kennedy. In 1965, Kennedy began a long and cherished association with the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. He taught constitutional law there until his elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988.

In his years as a private practitioner in San Francisco and Sacramento, Kennedy was an able lawyer of conservative inclination and Republican Party affiliation, as was his father. After his father's death, Kennedy gradually became more of an activist, expanding his circle of political friends, increasing his political campaign contributions, and influencing some of his clients to give generously to conservative causes. He also worked as a lobbyist and in that capacity became a close friend of Ed Meese, a lobbyist for the California District Attorneys Association. His friendship and cooperation with Meese continued after Ronald Reagan was elected governor in 1966. Subsequently, Meese asked Kennedy to assist Reagan in 1973 in drafting Proposition 1, a ballot initiative to cut state spending. Kennedy campaigned throughout the state on its behalf. Although Proposition 1 failed, Reagan appreciated Kennedy's efforts and later recommended him to President Gerald R. Ford for a judicial vacancy on the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. After thirteen years in private practice, Kennedy took his oath of office on 3 May 1975. Between 1975 and 1988, the year he was named an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Kennedy wrote over four hundred decisions. When the Senate Judiciary Committee considered his qualifications for elevation in its confirmation hearing, these circuit court decisions were subjected to sharp scrutiny as indicators of his views on the separation of powers, and minority and gender discrimination.

Despite a solid career as an able lawyer and circuit judge, Kennedy's emergence as President Reagan's successful nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy created by the resignation of Associate Justice Lewis Powell was overshadowed by the events surrounding the nominations of Robert H. Bork and Douglas Ginsburg, both rejected for the same position. Comparisons between Bork and Kennedy enlivened Senate debate of the latter's qualifications. Kennedy received the highest evaluation of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary—well qualified on the basis of his integrity, judicial temperament, and professional competence. In contrast, this committee had disagreed over Bork's qualifications, with four of its members voting him “not qualified” on the basis of his “extreme views respecting constitutional principles.”

Initially, Associate Justice Kennedy contributed substantially to conservative majority coalitions, voting with Chief Justice William Hubbs Rehnquist in 90 percent, and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in 89 percent, of the cases heard by the end of the 1988–1989 Court term. These early percentages did not, however, provide a completely predictive model of Kennedy's unfolding career on the Court. Kennedy is often referred to as a moderate conservative. With Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Kennedy is a swing voter, frequently voting with the conservatives Rehnquist, Scalia, and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, yet occasionally concurring with centrist or liberal Associate Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, and David Souter.

Kennedy's transition from a generally reliable supporter of Rehnquist to occasional swing voter has been complex. During his first four years on the Court, Kennedy rarely withheld support for an ever‐larger conservative majority. The consecutive appointments of Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas had appeared to give the chief justice an invincible conservative majority. Moreover, the chief justice assigned the writing of a large number of majority opinions, some in important cases, to Kennedy, unusual for a relatively new member of the Court. In terms of doctrine, this confidence was apparently justified by Kennedy's earlier years of service within the judiciary. Some commentators nevertheless came to refer to Kennedy as “Rehnquist's lieutenant.”

However, the attempt by Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas to overrule Roe v. Wade in *Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 was rejected by three fellow conservatives: Kennedy, O'Connor, and Souter. Their joint opinion concluded that the rejection of stare decisis “should rest on some special reason over and above the belief that a prior case was wrongly decided.” This division in conservative ranks was by no means universal, but it did mark a departure from the previous general solidarity among conservatives. Kennedy, O'Connor, and Souter often voted with their conservative colleagues in civil rights, criminal justice, and property rights cases.

Chief Justice Rehnquist has long opposed the Jeffersonian position that the First Amendment requires “a wall of separation between church and state,” arguing in an early case that this is a “misleading metaphor based on bad history.” O'Connor and Kennedy were crucial in defeating an effort to uphold graduation prayers led by a denominational cleric and student‐led prayers over a public school microphone in Lee v. Weisman. Yet the positions of O'Connor and Kennedy in the most serious and controversial case decided after Kennedy became a member of the Court were neither noteworthy nor independent. Bush v. Gore determined the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. It sharply divided the Court. It also aroused national partisan divisions. Every other justice expressed a strong position on the major issues, several in a number of separate opinions. In contrast, O'Connor and Kennedy quietly helped make a conservative majority.

Public policy positions taken outside the formal procedures of the Court also provide evidence of Kennedy's developing judicial persona. Perhaps the most important of these was his August 2003 address to the American Bar Association (ABA) calling for the abandonment of mandatory minimum sentences for some Federal crimes.

One serious constitutional issue that could call into question the very independence of the Supreme Court's justices and other Article III judges is the judicial monitoring directive of Attorney General John Ashcroft during the first administration of President George W. Bush. In July 2003, Ashcroft ordered U.S. attorneys to carefully monitor Federal judges who impose criminal sentences more lenient than provided for in the fifteen‐year‐old Federal sentencing guidelines. Federal prosecutors were directed to immediately report any downward deviation to the Justice Department. Ashcroft concluded, “The Department of Justice has a solemn obligation to ensure that laws concerning criminal sentencing are faithfully, fairly, and consistently enforced.”

Prior to the Ashcroft directive, Justice Kennedy had upheld tough penalty legislation and agreed to the need for sentencing guidelines to define the range of potential punishments and minimize inconsistencies. He had voted with the conservative majority to uphold the constitutionality of California's “three strikes and you're out” legislation for felons. But the swiftness of his response to Ashcroft's 28 July directive suggests that Kennedy had been seriously reconsidering a number of these and related issues.

In early August of 2003, Kennedy addressed the ABA, stating, “Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long. … I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences. In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise or unjust.” Although such laws have been upheld, Kennedy asked ABA members to persuade Congress to repeal mandatory minimum sentence laws. As he put it, “Courts may conclude that the legislation is permitted to choose long sentences, but that does not mean long sentences are wise or just.” Kennedy also urged ABA members to evaluate state and Federal criminal pardoning systems, stating that “the pardon process, of late, seems to have been drained of its moral force. Pardons are infrequent. … A people confident in its laws and institutions should not be ashamed of mercy.” He noted the large numbers of people “behind bars” of which “about 40% … is black,” concluding that “out of sight out of mind is an unacceptable excuse for a prison system that incarcerates over 2 million human beings in the United States.”

Justice Kennedy has indeed carved out a number of judicial and public policy positions independent of his original virtually complete commitment to the conservative Court coalition. But that independence has been limited and certainly unpredictable. Justice Kennedy's subsequent years on the Court have been somewhat more moderate; but he voted with Scalia and Rehnquist on Florida election issues.

Bibliography

• Anne Gearson, “SC Justice Kennedy Says Prison Terms Too Long”, summary of Kennedy's address to the American Bar Association, Ventura (California) Star (10 Aug. 2003), p. A4.
• Jerry Goldman, Anthony Kennedy, OYEZ Project of Northwestern University (2001).
• Jerry Goldman, Anthony Kennedy, Supreme Court Historical Society (2003).
• Jerry Goldman, Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Supreme Court Justices (2003). Kennedy Discusses Sentencing, Foundations of Freedom, The Third Branch 35, no. 9 (September 2003)

— John R. Schmidhauser

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (born 1936) was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1988. His votes generally tipped the balance in favor of conservative decisions.

Anthony M. Kennedy, who was named to the United States Supreme Court after President Ronald Reagan's first two nominations for Justice Lewis Powell's seat were unsuccessful, was born on July 23, 1936, in Sacramento, California. He reportedly experienced a remarkably trouble-free boyhood that included regular service as an altar boy at his Roman Catholic parish church. In fact, Kennedy used to joke with his young friends that his father in a fit of affectionate despair had offered to pay him $100 if just once he would do something requiring his parents to come pick him up at the local police station! The youngster never collected on the dare.

An honor roll student at McClatchy High School in Sacramento, Kennedy always assumed that he would attend Stanford University like his mother and become a lawyer like his father. Indeed, Kennedy was to follow in his parents' footsteps. As an undergraduate, the future justice continued his outstanding academic career. He was particularly captivated by constitutional law, and his professor for that class described him as "brilliant." Kennedy completed his graduation requirements in three years, but his father apparently thought his son was too young to enroll immediately in law school, so young Kennedy spent a year at the London School of Economics. Upon his return in 1958, he received his B.A. degree from Stanford, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He then attended Harvard Law School, from which he obtained his LL.B. degree, cum laude, in 1961.

Becomes Expert on Constitutional Law

Kennedy began his practice of law in the prestigious San Francisco firm of Thelen, Marrin, John & Bridges, but within two years he was back in Sacramento to assume the law practice of his father, who had died suddenly of a heart attack in 1963. Described as an "intellectual," Kennedy seemingly disliked the flesh-pressing required of lobbying work in the state capital. Eventually, he found an outlet for his more academic interest in the law when the dean of the McGeorge School of Law of the University of the Pacific offered him a part-time teaching position. Just as in his student days, he thrived in the classroom and would often amaze his own students by lecturing for three hours on constitutional law without referring to a note.

Like his father before him, Kennedy was a Republican, if not a particularly active one. Nevertheless, in the early 1970s he was asked to serve on a commission to draft a tax-limitation initiative known as Proposition 1 for Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. Although the ballot proposition failed in 1973, Kennedy had impressed the Reagan camp with his constitutional expertise. When an opening became available on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1975, President Gerald Ford was persuaded to appoint Kennedy to the circuit bench, making the 38-year-old Californian one of the youngest appellate justices in the nation's history.

"Unknown" Philosophy Leads to High Court

Significantly for the ideological fallout over the abortive nomination of Judge Robert Bork in 1987, Kennedy was described as a moderate conservative cast in the Gerald Ford, rather than in the Barry Goldwater, mold. Liberals were quick to label Kennedy "open-minded" in contrast to the "reactionary" Bork. Yet the more accurate picture of Kennedy's ideology in contrast to Bork's was not that it was less conservative but that it was virtually unidentifiable. The 430 opinions that Kennedy had drafted in his tenure on the Ninth Circuit did not reveal a clear jurisprudential posture on such controversial issues as civil rights, women's rights, and the issue which was Bork's downfall, the right to privacy. Unlike Bork's academic penchant for writing and speaking, Kennedy had left no paper trail of law review articles and speeches.

Thus, Kennedy's personal integrity, his judicial experience, and his less dogmatic ideology made him the perfect candidate to fill Justice Powell's "swing" seat on the Supreme Court after the turmoil surrounding the Senate's defeat of Bork in October 1987 and the withdrawal of Judge Douglas Ginsburg's nomination several weeks later when it was disclosed that he had used marijuana both as a student and as a law professor. After a seven-month ordeal to fill the Court's ninth seat, the Senate voted unanimously (97:0) on February 3, 1988, to confirm the Kennedy nomination. At the age of 51, Kennedy became the Court's youngest member.

Kennedy's early years on the high court by no means offered a definitive portrait of his Supreme Court jurisprudence, but his initial votes and opinions began to reveal identifiable trends. As occupied by Justice Kennedy, the Court's swing seat, which Justice Powell had captured for the moderate center, no longer functioned as a vote that balanced the liberal and conservative blocs by siding with one or the other from case to case. Instead, Kennedy's vote became a tie-breaker that consistently tipped the balance in favor of the conservatives.

Conservative Voting Record

In the abortion realm, for example, Kennedy voted with the 5:4 majority to allow states the right to impose substantial new restrictions on abortion (Webster v. Reproductive Health Services [1989]). Kennedy also arrived at a conservative result on the matter of the right to privacy vis-à-vis the drug-testing issue. In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives (1989) and National Treasury Employees v. Von Raab (1989), he wrote both majority opinions for the Court's constitutional sanction of the federal government's efforts to create a drug-free workplace.

It is in the area of affirmative action, however, that Justice Kennedy's vote began to distinguish him most fundamentally from Justice Powell. In early 1989 Kennedy voted with the 6:3 majority in invalidating a localset-aside law in Richmond, Virginia, that channeled 30 percent of public works funds to minority-owned construction companies (City of Richmondv. J.A. Croson Co.). He also cast his vote with the narrow 5:4 majority that ruled that court-approved affirmative action settlements may subsequently be challenged by disappointed white workers (Martin v. Wilks [1989]). The Court reached an equally conservative result, with Kennedy casting a fifth vote for the majority, in Wards Cove Packing v. Atonio (1989), which ruled that employee discrimination claims based on a statistical showing of underutilization of women or minorities must prove that the policies they are challenging cannot be justified as necessary to the employer's business.

Kennedy's most notable contribution to the Court's more conservative tack in employment discrimination cases was his majority opinion in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union (1989), which upheld the use of the 1866 Civil Rights Act for claims of discrimination at the initial hiring stage, but barred use of the statute for claims of on-the-job bias.

In church-state matters Kennedy revealed an accommodationist stance, particularly in simultaneous rulings on Christmas-season displays sponsored by city and county governments in Pittsburgh. He dissented from a decision declaring that a Nativity scene, unaccompanied by any more secular symbols of the season, amounted to an unconstitutional endorsement of the Christian faith. He found himself in the majority, however, when the Court permitted a Hanukkah menorah to be displayed next to a Christmas tree (Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh A.C.L.U. [1989]).

Another First Amendment case, this time in the free speech realm, found Kennedy uncharacteristically joining in a liberal decision which declared that burning the American flag as a political protest is a form of protected symbolic speech (Texas v. Johnson [1989]). Despite his vote in the controversial flag-burning case, Kennedy seemed to be clinging to a cautious conservatism bolstered by a professed adherence to judicial restraint.

According to the New Yorker (November 11, 1996), "Kennedy has disappointed conservatives by upholding liberal precedents on the crucial social issues of abortion, flag-burning, gay rights and school prayer.." A writer for (n"1"]Washingtonian December 1996) magazine noted that Kennedy and fellow justice Sandra Day O'Connor have become an "important tandem" because of their unpredictability. A critic retorted that Kennedy and O'Connor "should really be thrown to the alligators." (National Review June 17, 1996). But others state he is doing what he was appointed to do, as "he refuses to impose his personal views on the nation." (New Yorker November 11, 1996).

Kennedy married Mary Davis on June 29, 1963, and was the father of two sons and a daughter.

Further Reading

A short biographical sketch may be found in the Congressional Quarterly Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, 2d edition (1990). An informative analysis of Kennedy also appeared in the New York Times (November 12, 1987). The Senate Judiciary Committee's report of the hearings on Kennedy's Supreme Court nomination provided a wealth of material (100th Cong., 1st sess.).

See also New Republic (June 10, 1996); National Review (June 17, 1996); New Yorker (November 11, 1996); Washingtonian (December 1996); and U.S. News & World Report (July 7, 1997).

• Born: July 23, 1936, Sacramento, Calif.
• Education: Stanford University, B.A., 1958; London School of Economics, 1957–58; Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1961
• Previous government service: judge, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, 1975–88
• Appointed by President Ronald Reagan Nov. 30 1987; replaced Louis F. Powell, Jr., who retired
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Feb. 3, 1988, by a 97–0 vote

Anthony M. Kennedy was, for most of his career, a partner in a law firm and a teacher at the McGeorge School of Law of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. President Gerald Ford appointed Kennedy to be a federal appellate court judge, and between 1975 and 1988, Kennedy wrote more than 400 opinions as a federal judge on the Ninth Circit Court of Appeals.

After his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1988, Justice Kennedy, as a moderate conservative, tended to vote in agreement with Chief Justice William Rehnquist during the 1988–89 term. In 90 percent of the cases, he voted in agreement with the chief justice. Since then, he has shown more independence.In Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (1993), Kennedy wrote the decision for the Court to strike down a city's ban on ritual animal sacrifice, practiced by the followers of the Santera religion. Kennedy held that the city government of Hialeah, Florida, had violated the 1st Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

In Romer v. Evans (1996), Justice Kennedy wrote the Court's opinion to strike down an amendment to the Colorado constitution that prohibited legislation created specifically to protect the rights of homosexuals.

Kennedy, Anthony McLeod, 1936-, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1988-), b. Sacramento, Calif. He graduated from Stanford (1958) and Harvard Law School (1961). For many years (1965-88) he taught at the McGeorge School of Law at the Univ. of the Pacific. He was named to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1975. In 1988, after the highly contested and unsuccessful nominations of Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg, President Reagan nominated Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing Lewis F. Powell. On the court, Kennedy has demonstrated a fairly conservative voting pattern, but by the mid-1990s he had come to be regarded as part of a centrist bloc with Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter. Further changes in the court's composition by 2007 made Kennedy the main swing voter on the court. He also has come to be noted for advocating the consideration of foreign and international law and legal decisions when deciding U.S. constitutional issues.

Bibliography

See F. J. Colucci, Justice Kennedy's Jurisprudence (2009).

Anthony McLeod Kennedy was appointed as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. Kennedy was the third person nominated by President Ronald Reagan to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. A judicial conservative, Kennedy has generally voted with the conservative justices on the Court, yet he has split from them in significant rulings on abortion rights and gay rights.

Kennedy was born in Sacramento, California, on July 28, 1936. He graduated from Stanford University in 1958 and from Harvard University Law School in 1961. He practiced law in San Francisco and Sacramento, and taught constitutional law at the McGeorge School of Law of the University of the Pacific from 1965 to 1988.

His conservative philosophy and his Republican party affiliation led to Kennedy's first judicial appointment. In 1975 President Gerald R. Ford appointed him to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Kennedy served on the federal appeals court for thirteen years and wrote over four hundred opinions.

A well-respected jurist, Kennedy entered the national limelight after the Senate rejected President Reagan's first nominee for Powell's seat on the Court, Judge Robert H. Bork, and Reagan's second nominee, Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, withdrew following his admission that he had smoked marijuana. Kennedy's confirmation hearings were filled with questions that sought to compare his philosophy to Bork's. Bork had embraced the doctrine of original intent (the idea that a judge should apply the Constitution only in the exact manner intended by the Constitution's Framers) as the only legitimate means of interpretation. Kennedy testified that original intent was only a starting point in interpreting the Constitution. In his Senate testimony, Kennedy stated his commitment to the principle of stare decisis. This principle refers to the respect for legal precedent created by prior cases and the need to maintain precedent even if the current judges do not agree with the original ruling.

Kennedy was confirmed in February 1988, with many liberal members of Congress feeling he was too conservative, and some conservatives believing he was moderate, a compromise candidate who could survive the confirmation process.

Since taking office as associate justice, Kennedy has proved to be both conservative and moderate, depending on the case. He has usually sided with the conservative members of the Court, but he has gained attention by departing from them in two important cases. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 112 S. Ct. 2791, 120 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1992), watchers had expected the Court to overrule explicitly Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147, the 1973 decision that defined the right to choose abortion as a fundamental constitutional right. Kennedy joined with Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David H. Souter in an opinion that defended the reasoning of Roe and the line of cases that followed it.

In 1996 Kennedy wrote a landmark and controversial decision concerning gay rights. In Romer v. Evans, U.S., 116 S. Ct. 1620, 134 L. Ed. 2d 855, Kennedy declared unconstitutional an amendment to the Colorado state constitution (West's C.R.S.A. Const. Art. 2, §30b) that prohibited state and local governments from enacting any law, regulation, or policy that would, in effect, protect the civil rights of gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals. Kennedy ruled that the amendment violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, noting that the amendment classified gay men and lesbians "not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else," and adding, "[t]his Colorado cannot do." See also gay and lesbian rights.

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