Anthony M. Kennedy Quote
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of tho
Anthony M. Kennedy
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of tho
Related Quotes
Religion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from...
Jeffrey Tayler
Tags:
appraisal, art, common sense, debate, first amendment, freedom, freedom of speech, impose, politics, reason
About Anthony M. Kennedy
Born in Sacramento, California, Kennedy took over his father's legal practice in Sacramento after graduating from Stanford University and Harvard Law School. Kennedy became a U.S. federal judge in 1975 when President Gerald Ford appointed him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In November 1987, after two failed attempts at nominating a successor to Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., President Reagan nominated Kennedy to the Supreme Court. Kennedy won unanimous confirmation from the United States Senate in February 1988. Following the death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016, Kennedy became the senior associate justice of the court; he remained the senior associate justice until his July 2018 retirement. Kennedy retired during the presidency of Donald Trump and was succeeded by his former law clerk, Brett Kavanaugh. Following O'Connor's death in 2023, Kennedy is the oldest living former Supreme Court justice.
Kennedy authored the majority opinion in several important cases—including Boumediene v. Bush, Citizens United v. FEC, and four major gay rights cases: Romer v. Evans, Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, and Obergefell v. Hodges. He also co-authored the controlling opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey along with Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter.