Kennedy, Anthony McLeod

Kennedy, Anthony McLeod, 1936–, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1988–), b. Sacramento, Calif. He graduated from Stanford Univ. (1958) and Harvard Law School (1961). For many years (1965–88) he taught at the McGeorge School of Law at the Univ. of the Pacific. He was named to the U.S. Circuit 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 has 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 has come to be noted for being a conservative who advocates considering to foreign and international law and legal decisions when deciding U.S. constitutional issues.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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