Anthony Kennedy
Anthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, 1936 in Sacramento , California ) is an American lawyer . He was on 18 February 1988 to 31 July 2018 Judge at the Supreme Court of the United States .
With regard to his legal views, he is considered to be moderate, with regard to the basis for his decisions, he cannot be assigned to any particular legal philosophy .
Life
Education and family
Kennedy was born on July 23, 1936, the second of three children to his parents in the California capital Sacramento. His father also worked as a lawyer, and his mother engaged in social and charitable activities. He was raised Roman Catholic and has been married to Mary David, who worked as a teacher and librarian, since June 29, 1963. They have three children together. His son Gregory also pursued a legal career as a graduate of Stanford University Law School . His other son Justin Kennedy worked for Deutsche Bank .
Despite having the same name, there are no family ties to the Kennedy family , from which many well-known American politicians emerged. His favorite leisure activities include tennis, golf, swimming, jogging and cycling.
Kennedy studied political science at Stanford University from 1954 to 1957, attended the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1957 to 1958 and graduated in 1958 with a BA from Stanford University. He then studied law at Harvard Law School with an LL.B. He was admitted to the bar in California in 1962 and then worked as an associate in the law firm Thelen, Marrin, John & Bridges in San Francisco until 1963 . After the death of his father, he returned to Sacramento in 1963 to take over his office. He worked here as a lawyer in private practice, until 1967 as sole owner of the firm and from 1967 to 1975 in partnership under the name Evans, Jackson & Kennedy .
In 1975 he was nominated by President Gerald Ford to succeed Charles Merton Merrill as the youngest federal judge at the time to the federal appeals court for the ninth district. He took office on May 30, 1975 after being ratified by the Senate in April 1975 . In the years that followed, he assumed a leadership role within the court among the conservative judges who were in the minority at the court at the time.
From 1965 to 1988, in addition to his work as a lawyer and judge, he was also Professor of Constitutional Law at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific . For several years now, he has been teaching American and international law at the University of Salzburg every summer .
Supreme Court Justice
In 1987 Lewis F. Powell resigned from his post as a judge at the United States Supreme Court. Kennedy was shortlisted on the list of possible successors. However, US President Ronald Reagan initially proposed Robert Bork . However, the majority of Democratic Senators viewed this as too conservative, and for this reason his nomination failed after one of the most controversial hearings in US legal history. Reagan then nominated Douglas H. Ginsburg , who withdrew from the nomination only nine days later on allegations of previous marijuana use. In the third attempt, Reagan nominated Kennedy on November 30, 1987, who was confirmed by the Senate on February 3, 1988 with 97-0 votes. He took office on February 18, 1988.
Kennedy is one of the few judges in the history of the court who came to office after two failed candidates after a third nomination. With his clear election result, he confirmed the experience that such candidates are mostly viewed as moderate, so that their election is usually made with broad consensus. In addition to his actual job as a judge, he is also interested in the history of the Supreme Court.
After the Republican Donald Trump became US President in January 2017 so that he had the right to propose nominations and the conservative judge Neil Gorsuch succeeded Antonin Scalia , the political pressure on Kennedy to resign during Trump's term in office grew clear the way for a conservative successor. In July 2017 it was reported that Kennedy - contrary to his custom - had not yet employed any staff for the Supreme Court period beginning in October 2018, which was interpreted as a possible sign of his impending retirement, possibly even before the 2018 mid-term elections . In January 2018 There were reports of new hires on June 27, 2018, but Kennedy announced that he would be retiring on July 31. His successor was his former trainee lawyer, Brett Kavanaugh .
Legal positions
Although Anthony Kennedy was nominated by a Republican and downright Conservative president, his decisions regarding their ideological orientations are considered mixed. He agreed with the conservative wing of the court on some important decisions, for example in Stenberg v. Carhart , McConnell v. FEC , Grutter v. Bollinger and in the controversial decision Bush v. Gore , who ruled the 2000 presidential election in favor of George W. Bush . On the other hand, in cases like Romer v. Evans , Lawrence v. Texas , Ashcroft v. ACLU , Roper v. Simmons , Gonzales v. Raich , Kelo v. New London and Gonzales v. Oregon with the Liberal Justices of the Court.
His decisions are often characterized by verbose statements and unusual philosophical approaches. It is considered difficult to predict by constitutional law experts as it does not adhere to conventional methods of drafting and justifying its decisions. He has been heavily criticized in some cases for including European legal approaches in his decision-making in two controversial cases from 2003 and 2005. Kennedy's positions on various topics are generally consistent. His decisions are more of a pragmatic and practical nature and are strictly based on the facts of the respective case. Whenever possible, he avoided making general statements on fundamental ideological, political or legal questions. Together with Sandra Day O'Connor , he was considered a swing voter , i.e. the decisive vote, in many 5-to-4 decisions of the Supreme Court under the leadership of William H. Rehnquist , presiding judge up to, until her resignation in 2006 his death on September 3, 2005. Rehnquist had often entrusted Kennedy with taking on a mediating role between the conservative and liberal bloc of the court in contentious cases, for which he was nicknamed "Rehnquist's lieutenant" by some commentators.
In principle, he supports a broad interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and thus a constitutionally enshrined right to abortion (see Planned Parenthood v. Casey , 1992), but has also voted several times for restrictions on this right (for example in Stenberg v. Carhart , 2000). Because of his views in some law enforcement and police powers cases, he has been seen on occasion as a representative of a zero tolerance practice ( tough on crime ). His views on freedom of speech and the related First Amendment are considered to be more liberal, as for example in the Ashcroft v. ACLU . In the case of Texas v. Johnson (1989) he supported the view that the burning of the US flag was an act of free speech and was thus protected by the First Amendment. As a rule, he has voted for decisions that strengthen or confirm the rights of the states vis-à-vis the federal government. In addition, he rejects affirmative action , i.e. legally prescribed quota regulations in favor of minorities in filling vacancies, the allocation of offices, the selection of students and in comparable areas.
Because of his fundamental stance on certain constitutional issues, Kennedy was instrumental in some decisions that led to the establishment of legal equality for homosexuals. In 1996 he wrote the decision Romer v. Evans , who overruled a discriminatory provision of the Colorado state constitution . In 2003 he wrote the decision in the case of Lawrence v. Texas , by the laws against homosexual sodomy for unconstitutional declared. His decision in this case, in which he formed the majority with other liberal and moderate judges, was characterized by passionate rhetoric in the choice of words and by reference to international legal norms. However, even with the conservative majority in the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000) for the constitutionality of the exclusion of homosexuals from leadership positions in the Scout Association Boy Scouts of America voted. A special preference for such cases or judicial activism in favor of the rights of homosexuals cannot therefore be derived from his decisions.
Kennedy's decisions in capital penalty cases generally followed liberal views. In 2002 he was one of the six judges in the Atkins v. Virginia declared the execution of mentally disabled convicts unconstitutional. Three years later he wrote the majority opinion in the Roper v. Simmons , which banned the execution of minors under the age of 18. His decision was again characterized by extensive references to international legal standards, for which he was criticized in particular by conservative lawyers and politicians.
Awards
Web links
- Official biography on the US Supreme Court website (PDF file, 73 kB)
- The Oyez Project - Anthony Kennedy (English)
- Anthony Kennedy in the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/07/12/untangling-the-links-between-trump-deutsche-bank-and-justice-kennedys-son/
- ↑ Hoch, Maureen: Judge Anthony Kennedy: In 1988 President Reagan had to nominate a solid Supreme Court Justice after two previous nomination attempts failed. , PBS. March 9, 2007. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
- ↑ Nina Totenberg: Justice Neil Gorsuch Votes 100 Percent Of The Time With Most Conservative Colleague. In: National Public Radio , July 1, 2017 (English).
- ↑ https://thehill.com/regulation/367950-ginsburg-kennedy-hire-law-clerks-for-future-supreme-court-terms
- ^ Robert Barnes: Justice Kennedy, the pivotal swing vote on the Supreme Court, announces retirement . In: Washington Post . June 27, 2018, ISSN 0190-8286 ( washingtonpost.com [accessed June 27, 2018]).
- ↑ thehill.com: Kennedy Announces retirement from Supreme Court
- ↑ Scott Shane, Steve Eder, Rebecca R. Ruiz, Adam Liptak, Charlie Savage, Ben Protess: Influential Judge, Loyal Friend, Conservative Warrior - and DC Insider. The New York Times, July 14, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 .
- ↑ Whether such a simplistic characterization of the complexity of the corresponding decisions as well as Kennedy's pragmatic approach is fair remains to be seen.
- ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF file; 6.59 MB)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kennedy, Anthony |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kennedy, Anthony McLeod |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American federal judge |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 23, 1936 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sacramento , California |