Never predictable, Justice Anthony Kennedy leaves legacy in cons & liberal decisions

[DGUtley]

Never predictable, Justice Anthony Kennedy leaves legacy in conservative, liberal decisions. This provides a pretty good description of his history on the court.


Attachment 23805

http://www.abajournal.com/news/artic...gn=daily_email

[Mini Me]

Anthony Kennedy, You Are a Total Disgrace to America


No one expected Kennedy to allow Donald Trump to pick his successor. But he has. And it should forever taint his legacy as a jurist, Michael Tomasky writes.

MICHAEL TOMASKY
07.02.18 4:54 AM ET

It’s been a few days now, but the shock of Anthony Kennedy’s retirement announcement hasn’t abated a bit. This is partly because of the ghastly coming ramifications, more on which later. But it’s also because I honestly didn’t think Kennedy would allow Donald Trump to name his successor.

I thought he had more respect for the United States of America than to allow this corrupt gangster who’s almost certainly never read a Supreme Court opinion in his life to name his successor. Yes, Kennedy is conservative, so to that extent it makes sense that he’d want a Republican president to make the call, and maybe it’s just that simple. But whatever his motivation, Kennedy has altered and destroyed his legacy.

Let me put it this way. If I owned a restaurant and he walked in, I’d serve him dinner. But if the other diners mocked and shamed him, I wouldn’t exactly cry.

Until last week, Kennedy’s legacy was going to be that of a basically conservative but sometimes interesting jurist. He was awful on money in politics. Awful.

If you never read Jeffrey Toobin’s important New Yorker piece from 2012, a tick-tock on the inside baseball of how the Court decided Citizens United, do so. Toobin shows that it was Kennedy who pushed behind the scenes to move the opinion as far to the right as a majority would accept. When this new Court has struck down any and all limits on campaign donations, as it almost surely will, and this country becomes an open oligarchy, we’ll have Kennedy to thank.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/anthon...erica?ref=home

[MrMike]

Seems like he was operating as the basic epitome of fair and balanced in his assessment and reasoning of his judgments/decisions.

[Captdon]

Yea, an 81 year old man shouldn't retire unless a Democrat is in the WH.