Kennedy, Anthony McLeod

Anthony McLeod Kennedy (1936–) became an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988, a position he still holds at the time of this writing. Although Kennedy has been an important centrist vote on the Court, in Fourth Amendment cases he is a much more predictable member of the conservative majority. Kennedy was born in Sacramento, California, on July 23, 1936. Growing up, he developed a deep interest in the law while helping his father with his legal practice. After receiving a B.A. in political science from Stanford University in 1958, and studying for a year at the London School of Economics, Kennedy attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated, cum laude, in 1961. He then returned to Sacramento to practice law. In 1975, President Gerald Ford appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Kennedy became, at the time, the nation's youngest federal judge. He continued to teach night school constitutional law classes in Sacramento, at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, until President Ronald Reagan nominated him to join the U.S. Supreme Court. Kennedy was Reagan's third choice after failed nominees Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsberg.

Justice Kennedy is frequently described as the Court's most important member. He has not been a dependably conservative or liberal justice. Consequently, his position at the ideological center of the Court gives him the “swing vote” in closely divided cases. There are, however, some areas of the law in which Kennedy has cast votes and written opinions that make very consistent arguments. For example, in First Amendment free speech cases, he normally adopts a libertarian approach, strongly defending an individual's expressive freedom. He is similarly hostile to governmental efforts to treat people differently (both positively and negatively) on the basis of either their race or their sexual orientation.

At the time of his Supreme Court nomination, the White House emphasized Kennedy's conservative commitment to law and order. In matters of criminal law—including the Fourth Amendment—Kennedy has indeed been a reliably conservative justice, often deferring to the judgments of the legislative and executive branches. However, he has also demonstrated a strong desire to ensure that those accused or convicted of crimes are treated in a dignified manner. Speaking to the American Bar Association (ABA) in 2003, he said that society cannot afford “to run a system with a sign at the entrance for inmates saying ‘Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.’”

On the Court, this compassionate element of Kennedy's conservatism is most evident in his opinions in death penalty cases. It has also influenced the justice's views on sentencing guidelines that include requirements that judges impose mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes. In 2003, the ABA created the Justice Kennedy Commission (now the Commission on Effective Criminal Sanctions) to study current sentencing practices and the conditions created by them.

The concept of dignity has made a far less significant contribution to Kennedy's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. He has acknowledged that the amendment protects the “privacy, dignity, and security” of individuals from “certain arbitrary and invasive” government actions (Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Association [1989]). However, this rarely affects his tendency to reach a generally conservative conclusion about the amendment's meaning.

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