Frankeneinstein
Gold Member
Wasn't kennedy, Borks replacement pick? Reagan couldn't get Bork through and the left made it clear they would only confirm a nomination they agreed with...Bork once joked that his name has become a/an verb/adjective because of the nomination process i.e. "they borked the pick"...lolNo doubt. Although he wasn't exactly a true RWer. Consider:
Early in his Supreme Court tenure, Kennedy voted with Rehnquist and the conservative bloc 90 percent of the time, including striking down an affirmative action program requiring set-asides for black-owned construction firms and upholding a law requiring minors seeking abortions to first get permission from a parent.
But Kennedy also showed early on that his decisions weren't based on political ideology, siding with his liberal colleagues in 1989 to uphold a ruling that protesters had a Constitutional right to burn the American flag.
In 1992, he voted with the liberal wing again, ruling that legal restrictions on access to abortion must not constitute an "undue burden" on a woman's right to abortion established in the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.
He also voted to extend constitutional protections to gays and lesbians, writing the 1996 opinion striking down a Colorado constitutional amendment denying homosexuals the right to file local discrimination claims. He also sided with the court's liberal wing in 2003 in declaring unconstitutional a Texas law criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults of the same sex.
But many conservatives believed that Kennedy redeemed himself when he cast the deciding vote in the landmark case of Gore vs. Bush that ended a recount in Florida of the presidential election and sent Republican George W. Bush to the White House.
In 2015, Kennedy was again slammed as a conservative traitor when he cast the deciding vote in two landmark cases.
Not only did he cast the deciding vote guaranteeing the right to same-sex marriage, he wrote the majority opinion: "It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."
That same year, Kennedy voted to uphold a key component of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, allowing the federal government to provide nationwide tax subsidies to help Americans buy health insurance.
Anthony Kennedy, crucial Supreme Court swing vote, retiring after 3 decades
Last edited: