Anthony Kennedy

Anthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, 1936) is an American attorney and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018.

Kennedy attended C. K. McClatchy High School, where he was an honors student and graduated in 1954.

Following in his mother's footsteps, Kennedy enrolled at Stanford University where he developed an interest in constitutional law.

After spending his senior year at the London School of Economics, Kennedy graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

Kennedy then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1961 with a Bachelor of Laws cum laude.

Kennedy was in private practice in San Francisco from 1961 to 1963.

Kennedy served in the California Army National Guard from 1961 to 1962 and became a private first class.

In 1963, following his father's death, he took over his father's Sacramento practice, which he operated until 1975.

From 1965 to 1988, he was a professor of constitutional law at McGeorge School of Law, at the University of the Pacific.

During Kennedy's time as a California law professor and attorney, he helped California Governor Ronald Reagan draft a state tax proposal.

Kennedy became a U.S. federal judge in 1975 when President Gerald Ford appointed him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

On March 3, 1975, upon Reagan's recommendation, President Gerald Ford nominated Kennedy to the seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that had been vacated by Charles Merton Merrill.

Kennedy was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 20 and received his commission on March 24, 1975.

He also served on two committees of the Judicial Conference of the United States: the Advisory Panel on Financial Disclosure Reports and Judicial Activities (subsequently renamed the Advisory Committee on Codes of Conduct) from 1979 to 1987, and the Committee on Pacific Territories from 1979 to 1990, which he chaired from 1982 to 1990.

In November 1987, after two failed attempts at nominating a successor to Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., President Reagan nominated Kennedy to the Supreme Court.

He was on the board of the Federal Judicial Center from 1987 to 1988.

In July 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court seat vacated by Lewis F. Powell Jr., who had announced his retirement in late June.

However, he was rejected 42–58 by the Senate on October 23.

On November 11, 1987, Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to fill Powell's seat.

Kennedy was then subjected to an unprecedentedly thorough investigation of his background, which did not uncover any information that would hinder his nomination.

In a Ninth Circuit dissent that Kennedy wrote before joining the Supreme Court, he criticized police for bribing a child into showing them where the child's mother hid drugs.

Considering such conduct offensive and destructive of the family, Kennedy wrote that "indifference to personal liberty is but the precursor of the state's hostility to it."

Kennedy wrote an article the year before, however, about judicial restraint, and the following excerpt from it was read aloud by Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Taskforce, at his confirmation hearing:

"One can conclude that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist in any just society. It does not follow that each of those essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system. Many argue that a just society grants a right to engage in homosexual conduct. If that view is accepted, the Bowers decision in effect says the State of Georgia has the right to make a wrong decision—wrong in the sense that it violates some people's views of rights in a just society. We can extend that slightly to say that Georgia's right to be wrong in matters not specifically controlled by the Constitution is a necessary component of its own political processes. Its citizens have the political liberty to direct the governmental process to make decisions that might be wrong in the ideal sense, subject to correction in the ordinary political process."

Kennedy said about Griswold v. Connecticut, a privacy case about the use of contraceptives, "I really think I would like to draw the line and not talk about the Griswold case so far as its reasoning or its result."

He also discussed "a zone of liberty, a zone of protection, a line that's drawn where the individual can tell the Government, 'Beyond this line you may not go.

He was nominated to the court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and sworn in on February 18, 1988.

Kennedy won unanimous confirmation from the United States Senate in February 1988.

The president's next nominee, Douglas Ginsburg, withdrew his name from consideration on November 7 after admitting to marijuana use, and Senate Judiciary Committee member Patrick Leahy said that if Reagan's next nominee was unacceptable to Senate Democrats, they would refuse hearings for any candidate until after the 1988 presidential election.

After the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, he was considered the swing vote on many of the Roberts Court's 5–4 decisions.

Born in Sacramento, California, Kennedy took over his father's legal practice in Sacramento after graduating from Stanford University and Harvard Law School.

Following the death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016, Kennedy became the senior associate justice of the court; he remained the senior associate justice until his July 2018 retirement.

Kennedy retired during the presidency of Donald Trump and was succeeded by his former law clerk, Brett Kavanaugh.

Following O'Connor's death in 2023, Kennedy is the oldest living former Supreme Court justice.

Kennedy authored the majority opinion in several important cases—including Boumediene v. Bush, Citizens United v. FEC, and four major gay rights cases: Romer v. Evans, Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, and Obergefell v. Hodges.

He also co-authored the controlling opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey along with Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter.

Kennedy was born and raised in an Irish Catholic family in Sacramento, California.

He was the son of Anthony J. Kennedy, an attorney with a reputation for influence in the California State Legislature, and Gladys (née McLeod), who participated in many local civic activities.

As a boy, Kennedy came into contact with prominent politicians of the day, such as California Governor and future Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren.

As a young man, Kennedy served as a page in the California State Senate.