Anthony McLeod Kennedy was born on July 23,1936 and is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018.
52 Facts About Anthony Kennedy
2.
Anthony Kennedy was nominated to the court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and sworn in on February 18,1988.
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Anthony Kennedy won unanimous confirmation from the United States Senate in February 1988.
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Anthony Kennedy retired during the presidency of Donald Trump and was succeeded by his former law clerk, Brett Kavanaugh.
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Anthony Kennedy co-authored the plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood v Casey along with Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter.
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Anthony Kennedy was born and raised in an Irish Catholic family in Sacramento, California.
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Anthony Kennedy was the son of Anthony J Kennedy, an attorney with a reputation for influence in the California State Legislature, and Gladys, who participated in many local civic activities.
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Anthony Kennedy was in private practice in San Francisco from 1961 to 1963.
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Anthony Kennedy served in the California Army National Guard from 1961 to 1962 and became a private first class.
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Anthony Kennedy was on the board of the Federal Judicial Center from 1987 to 1988.
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Anthony Kennedy served on two committees of the Judicial Conference of the United States: the Advisory Panel on Financial Disclosure Reports and Judicial Activities from 1979 to 1987, and the Committee on Pacific Territories from 1979 to 1990, which he chaired from 1982 to 1990.
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Anthony Kennedy was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate on March 20 and received his commission on March 24,1975.
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On November 11,1987, Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to fill Powell's seat.
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Anthony Kennedy was then subjected to an unprecedentedly thorough investigation of his background, which did not uncover any information that would hinder his nomination.
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Vanity Fair quoted several former Supreme Court clerks as indicating that they believe Kennedy was often swayed by the opinions of his clerks, including his ruling on Planned Parenthood v Casey.
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Anthony Kennedy issued conservative rulings during most of his tenure, having voted with William Rehnquist as often as any other justice from 1992 to the end of the Rehnquist Court in 2005.
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However, Anthony Kennedy was known for siding with the court's liberal justices on high-profile social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.
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Anthony Kennedy was known as a swing vote on the court, and this reputation became more pronounced after the 2005 retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
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Anthony Kennedy, who was slightly more conservative than former Justice O'Connor was on issues of race, religion, and abortion, intensely disliked being labeled a "swing vote" in public.
20.
Anthony Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court and made the transition to senior status effective July 31,2018.
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Anthony Kennedy has the distinction of being the only Supreme Court Justice to have two former clerks of his be appointed to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
22.
Toobin sees this consideration of foreign law as the biggest factor behind Anthony Kennedy's occasional breaking with his most conservative colleagues.
23.
In Hodgson v Minnesota, 497 US 417, Kennedy voted to uphold a restriction on abortion for minors that required both parents to be notified about the procedure.
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Anthony Kennedy had stated at least as early as 1989 that, in order to uphold precedent, he might not vote to overturn Roe.
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In later abortion decisions, it became apparent that Anthony Kennedy thought Casey had narrowed Roe and allowed more restrictions.
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Hence, O'Connor became the justice who defined the meaning of Casey in subsequent cases, while Anthony Kennedy was relegated to dissents in which he sought to explain what he thought Casey meant.
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For example, Kennedy dissented in the 2000 decision in Stenberg v Carhart, which struck down laws criminalizing partial-birth abortion.
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In 2008, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Kennedy v Louisiana.
29.
Anthony Kennedy 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.
30.
Anthony Kennedy later wrote the Supreme Court's opinion in Romer v Evans, invalidating a provision in the Colorado Constitution excluding homosexuals from any state or local anti-discrimination protections.
31.
Anthony Kennedy wrote the Court's opinion in Lawrence v Texas, which invalidated criminal laws against homosexual sodomy on the basis of the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution, overturning the Court's previous ruling in Bowers v Hardwick.
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Anthony Kennedy said that the reasoning behind Bowers was not widely accepted in American law and that it had been rejected by most other developed Western countries.
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Two years later, Kennedy authored the majority ruling in the decision of Obergefell v Hodges, which holds that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry nationwide.
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The closing paragraph of Anthony Kennedy's ruling has been used by many couples in their marriage vows:.
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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.
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Anthony Kennedy sided with the conservatives on the Court, holding that the Second Amendment recognized an individual's right to keep and bear arms.
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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.
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Anthony 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.
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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.
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Anthony Kennedy has joined with court majorities in decisions favoring states' rights and invalidating federal and state affirmative action programs.
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Anthony Kennedy ruled with the majority on Equal Protection grounds in the controversial 2000 Bush v Gore case that halted continuing recounts in the 2000 presidential election and ended the legal challenge to the election of President George Bush.
42.
In Baze v Rees, Kennedy played a deciding role in the outcome of lethal injection.
43.
Anthony Kennedy's dissents, joined by Roberts, Breyer, and Alito, claimed that the rule would place a burden on understaffed labs.
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However, in Williams v Illinois, Kennedy sided with Scalia's interpretation of the amendment.
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Anthony Kennedy called for reform of overcrowded American prisons in a speech before the American Bar Association.
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Anthony Kennedy 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.
47.
In 2005, Anthony Kennedy received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Sir Roger Bannister.
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In January 2015, Anthony 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.
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On June 23,1963, Anthony Kennedy married Mary Jeanne Davis from Sacramento, California.
50.
Mary Anthony Kennedy was a third grade teacher at the Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.
51.
Justin Anthony Kennedy worked for Goldman Sachs, and then for Deutsche Bank from 1997 to 2009; he became its global head of real estate capital markets.
52.
Anthony Kennedy is one of 15 Roman Catholics to have served on the Supreme Court.