Kennedy, Anthony McLeod (1936-…), was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 to 2018. President Ronald Reagan had named Kennedy to fill the vacancy created by Justice Lewis Powell’s retirement. Reagan nominated Kennedy after the U.S. Senate rejected his first nominee, Robert H. Bork, and after his second nominee, Douglas H. Ginsburg, withdrew.
As a Supreme Court justice, Kennedy was generally considered a conservative. But he cast key votes for liberal views in the area of privacy rights, especially for homosexuals, and in some free speech cases. Kennedy retired from the court in July 2018.
Kennedy was born on July 23, 1936, in Sacramento, California. He graduated from Stanford University in 1958 and from Harvard Law School in 1961. He practiced law in San Francisco from 1961 to 1963 and in Sacramento from 1963 to 1975. In that year, President Gerald Ford appointed Kennedy to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Kennedy also taught constitutional law at the McGeorge School of Law of the University of the Pacific in Sacramento from 1965 until his nomination to the Supreme Court.
See also Supreme Court of the United States .
