Anthony Kennedy - Appointment

Appointment

On November 30, 1987, Kennedy was nominated to the Supreme Court seat that had been vacated by Lewis F. Powell, Jr.. His nomination came after Reagan's failed nominations of Robert Bork, who was rejected by the Senate, and Douglas Ginsburg, who withdrew his name from consideration after admitting to marijuana use. Kennedy was subjected then to an unprecedentedly thorough investigation of his background, which he easily passed.

In a lower court dissent that Kennedy had written before joining the Supreme Court, he had criticized police for bribing a child into showing them where the child's mother hid drugs. Considering such conduct offensive and destructive of the family, Kennedy had written that "indifference to personal liberty is but the precursor of the state's hostility to it." Kennedy had written an article the year before, however, about judicial restraint, and the following excerpt from it was read aloud at his confirmation hearing:

One can conclude that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist in any just society. It does not follow that each of those essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system. Many argue that a just society grants a right to engage in homosexual conduct. If that view is accepted, the Bowers decision in effect says the State of Georgia has the right to make a wrong decision—wrong in the sense that it violates some people's views of rights in a just society. We can extend that slightly to say that Georgia's right to be wrong in matters not specifically controlled by the Constitution is a necessary component of its own political processes. Its citizens have the political liberty to direct the governmental process to make decisions that might be wrong in the ideal sense, subject to correction in the ordinary political process.

Kennedy said about Griswold v. Connecticut (a privacy case regarding contraceptives), "I really think I would like to draw the line and not talk about the Griswold case so far as its reasoning or its result." He also discussed "a zone of liberty, a zone of protection, a line that's drawn where the individual can tell the Government, 'Beyond this line you may not go.'" When his nomination was voted upon, Kennedy received bipartisan support. Maureen Hoch of PBS has written that he “virtually sailed through the confirmation process and was widely viewed by conservatives and liberals alike as balanced and fair.” The United States Senate confirmed him on February 3, 1988, by a vote of 97 to 0. Kennedy received his commission on February 11, 1988.