Anthony Kennedy facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Anthony Kennedy
Official portrait, c. 2005
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
In office February 18, 1988 – July 31, 2018
Nominated by	Ronald Reagan
Preceded by	Lewis F. Powell Jr.
Succeeded by	Brett Kavanaugh
Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
In office March 24, 1975 – February 18, 1988
Nominated by	Gerald Ford
Preceded by	Charles Merton Merrill
Succeeded by	Pamela Ann Rymer
Personal details
Born	Anthony McLeod Kennedy (1936-07-23) July 23, 1936 (age 88) Sacramento, California, U.S.
Spouse	Mary Davis ​ (m. 1963)​
Children	3
Education	Stanford University (BA) London School of Economics Harvard University (LLB)
Awards	Henry J. Friendly Medal (2019)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	United States Army
Years of service	1961–1962
Rank	Private first class
Unit	California Army National Guard

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. He was nominated to the court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and sworn in on February 18, 1988. 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. 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. 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. Kennedy won unanimous confirmation from the United States Senate in February 1988. 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.

Early life and education

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. 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.

Early career

Kennedy was in private practice in San Francisco from 1961 to 1963. 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 served in the California Army National Guard from 1961 to 1962 and became a private first class. He was on the board of the Federal Judicial Center from 1987 to 1988. 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.

U.S. 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.

Supreme Court of the United States

Nomination and confirmation

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. The president's next nominee, Douglas Ginsburg, withdrew his name from consideration on November 7, 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.

President Reagan and Kennedy meeting in the Oval Office on November 11, 1987

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.

His hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee began on December 14, and lasted just three consecutive days. When the Senate voted on Kennedy's nomination, he received bipartisan support. Maureen Hoch of PBS wrote that he "virtually sailed through the confirmation process and was widely viewed by conservatives and liberals alike as balanced and fair". The U.S. Senate confirmed him on February 3, 1988, by a vote of 97 to 0; he is the most recent Supreme Court justice to be confirmed by a unanimous vote. Absent from the vote were three Democrats: Paul Simon and Al Gore were campaigning and Joe Biden was ill. Attorney General Edwin Meese presented Kennedy's commission to the court in a swearing-in ceremony on February 18, 1988.

Jurisprudence

First amendment rights of contractors

O'Hare Truck Service, Inc. was a towing company employed under contract by the City of Northlake in northern Illinois. Northlake removed O'Hare from its list on towing companies because the company's owner did not support Northlake's mayoral candidate in his reelection campaign: instead, the owner supported an opposition candidate. The Supreme Court held, in a majority 7–2 opinion written by Kennedy (O'Hare Truck Service, Inc. v. City of Northlake), that independent contractors such as O'Hare are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as those afforded to government employees. Accordingly, Northlake could not base the towing company's employment on its political affiliations or beliefs unless the city could demonstrate that their political affiliations "had a reasonable and appreciable effect on its job performance". The Court held that Northlake neither attempted nor would it have been able to make such a demonstration. Therefore, Northlake's removal of O'Hare Truck Service from its employment list was unconstitutional.

Free speech

On May 30, 2006, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Garcetti v. Ceballos relating to whether the First Amendment protects statements by public officials pursuant to their duties from employer discipline. Kennedy utilized past precedents in Pickering v. Board of Education to determine whether or not an employee spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern or in the capacity of his office. Upon the identification that speech was said in an official capacity, Kennedy determined that a government entity, in its role as an employer, had the discretion to impose speech restrictions so long as they had the potential to affect its operations. Kennedy emphasized this point by writing: "when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline".

On June 28, 2012, Kennedy wrote the plurality opinion in United States v. Alvarez declaring the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional. In doing so, Kennedy determined the Act supported a content-based restriction on speech - that being a nondefamatory falsehood of having received a military decoration or medal - and that the government failed to provide a direct causal link between the restriction and a potential injury. Additionally, Kennedy wrote that such a restriction failed to meet the standards of strict scrutiny, with the law acting to "[seek] to control and suppress all false statements on this one subject in almost limitless times and settings".

Capital punishment

With the Court's majority in Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, Kennedy agreed that the execution of the mentally ill and those under 18 at the time of the crime was unconstitutional. In Kansas v. Marsh, however, he declined to join the dissent, which questioned the overall "soundness" of the existing capital punishment system.

Environment

Kennedy wrote the majority decision in Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (2009), which involved an Alaskan mining company that planned to extract new gold from a mine that had been closed for decades using a technique known as "froth-flotation". This technique would produce approximately 4.5 million tons of "slurry", a thick waste product laced with toxic elements such as lead and mercury. The company intended to dispose of the waste in a nearby lake, which would eventually decrease the depth of the lake by fifty feet and flood the surrounding land with contaminated water. While federal law forbids "[t]he use of any river, lake, stream or ocean as a waste treatment system", Kennedy's decision stated that pollutants are exempt from this law so long as they have "the effect of ... changing the bottom elevation of water". Justice Ginsburg's dissent stated that such a reading of federal law "strains credulity" because it allows "[w]hole categories of regulated industries" to "gain immunity from a variety of pollution-control standards".

Gun issues

On June 26, 2008, Kennedy joined the majority in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down the ban on handguns in the District of Columbia. At issue was whether Washington, D.C.'s ban violated the right to "keep and bear arms" by preventing individuals from having guns in their homes. Kennedy sided with the conservatives on the Court, holding that the Second Amendment recognized an individual's right to keep and bear arms. Two years later, in McDonald v. Chicago, Kennedy joined the majority opinion holding that the Second Amendment's protections for the right to keep and bear arms are incorporated against the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Habeas corpus

On June 12, 2008, Kennedy wrote the 5–4 majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush. The case challenged the legality of Lakhdar Boumediene's detention at the Guantanamo Bay military base as well as the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006. Kennedy was joined by the four more liberal justices in finding that the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus applies to persons held in Guantanamo Bay and to persons designated as enemy combatants on that territory. They also found that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 failed to provide an adequate substitute for habeas corpus and that the MCA was an unconstitutional suspension of that right.

The court also concluded that the detainees are not required to exhaust review procedures in the court of appeals before seeking habeas relief in the district court. In the ruling, Kennedy called the Combatant Status Review Tribunals "inadequate". He explained, "to hold that the political branches may switch the constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this court, 'say what the law is'". The decision struck down section seven of the MCA but left intact the Detainee Treatment Act. In a concurring opinion, Justice Souter stressed the fact that the prisoners involved had been imprisoned for as long as six years.

Religious liberty

On issues of religion, Kennedy held to a less separationist reading of the Establishment Clause than did his colleague, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, favoring a "Coercion Test" that he detailed in County of Allegheny v. ACLU. Kennedy authored the majority opinion in Town of Greece v. Galloway, 572 U.S. 565 (2014), concluding, "The town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment by opening its meetings with prayer that comports with our tradition, and does not coerce participation by nonadherents."

Super PACs

Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Citizens United found that the BCRA §203 prohibition of all independent expenditures by corporations and unions violated the First Amendment's protection of free speech. The majority wrote, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

Justice Kennedy's opinion for the majority also noted that because the First Amendment does not distinguish between media and other corporations, these restrictions would allow Congress to suppress political speech in newspapers, books, television, and blogs. The court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990), which had held that a state law that prohibited corporations from using treasury money to support or oppose candidates in elections did not violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court also overruled that portion of McConnell v. FEC (2003) that upheld BCRA's restriction of corporate spending on "electioneering communications". The Court's ruling effectively freed corporations and unions to spend money both on "electioneering communications" and to directly advocate for the election or defeat of candidates (although not to contribute directly to candidates or political parties).

On October 25, 2011, Richard L. Hasen wrote that in the 2012 election super PACs "will likely replace political parties as a conduit for large, often secret contributions, allowing an end run around the $2,500 individual contribution limit and the bar on corporate and labor contributions to federal candidates". According to Hasen, the rise of super PACs dates to a sentence in Kennedy's opinion in Citizens United: "We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption." Kennedy also wrote in his opinion that he was not concerned if higher expenditures by people or corporations were viewed as leading to corruption, stating, "the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."

Public speaking and teaching

Kennedy called for reform of overcrowded American prisons in a speech before the American Bar Association. He has spent his summers in Salzburg, Austria, where he teaches international and American law at the University of Salzburg for the McGeorge School of Law international program and has attended the large yearly international judges' conference held there.

In 1994, he ran a series of mock trials of Shakespeare's character Hamlet, for his murder of Polonius. Alan Stone was a psychiatric witness for the prosecution, tasked with fighting against an insanity defense. The juries usually deadlocked.

In 2005, Kennedy received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Sir Roger Bannister.

In January 2015, Kennedy recorded a short interview for Historic Mount Vernon about the vital role George Washington had played in the drafting and early interpretation of the Constitution.

Personal life

On June 23, 1963, Kennedy married Mary Jeanne Davis from Sacramento, California. The Kennedys have three children: Justin, Gregory, and Kristin. Mary Kennedy and the three Kennedy children are all graduates of Stanford.

Mary Kennedy was a third grade teacher at the Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.

Justin Kennedy worked for Goldman Sachs, and then for Deutsche Bank from 1997 to 2009; he became its global head of real estate capital markets. During his time at Deutsche Bank he helped Donald Trump secure a $640 million loan for a Chicago real estate project.

Gregory attended Stanford Law School and was a president of the Stanford Federalist Society. He was an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell in the 1990s, later worked at UBS, and, since October 2016, is the chief operating officer at the investment bank Disruptive Technology Advisers, which works closely with Dropbox, 23andMe, and Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies.

Kennedy is one of 15 Roman Catholics to have served on the Supreme Court (out of a total of 116 justices).

See also