Anthony Kennedy - Supreme Court Tenure - Jurisprudence

Jurisprudence

Though appointed by a Republican president, Kennedy is not easily pigeonholed ideologically. He has tended to look at cases individually instead of deciding them on the basis of a rigid ideology. As Kennedy said at a reunion of his law clerks, "We always tried to get it right." Conservative pundit George Will and Georgetown University Law Center professor Randy Barnett have described Kennedy's jurisprudence as "libertarian," although other legal scholars have disagreed.

Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor have been swing votes in many 5-4 and 6-3 decisions on the Rehnquist and Roberts courts. On issues of religion, he holds to a less separationist reading of the Establishment Clause than did O'Connor, favoring a "Coercion Test" that he detailed in County of Allegheny v. ACLU.

Kennedy has supported adding substance to the "liberty" interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which means he supports a constitutional right to abortion in principle, though he has voted to uphold several restrictions on that right, including laws to prohibit partial-birth abortions. He is "tough on crime" and opposes creating constitutional restrictions on the police, especially in Fourth Amendment cases involving searches for illegal drugs, although there are some exceptions, such as his concurrence in Ferguson v. City of Charleston. He also takes a very broad view of constitutional protection for speech under the First Amendment, invalidating a congressional law prohibiting "virtual" child pornography in the 2002 decision, Ashcroft v. ACLU.