Kennedy, Anthony McLeod, 1936–, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1988–2018), b. Sacramento, Calif., grad. Stanford (1958), Harvard Law School (1961). For many years (1965–88) he taught at the McGeorge School of Law at the Univ. of the Pacific, and he has continued to teach there on an occasional basis. He was named to the U.S. 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 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 came to be noted for advocating the consideration of foreign and international law and legal decisions when deciding U.S. constitutional issues and for his opinions in support of gay rights.
See F. J. Colucci, Justice Kennedy's Jurisprudence (2009).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Supreme Court: Biographies
