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A week ago, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that implementation of the Affordable Care Act stood to “…change the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.” (1) But though Kennedy was probably unaware of it at the time, that “change” is precisely what the authors of ObamaCare have hoped to impose on the American public for decades. For healthcare itself was never the real purpose of the massive, complex and overreaching law, as the following information should make clear. Charged with defending the Constitutionality of the Act before the Court, Solicitor General Donald...

So far there doesn't appear to have been any fireworks — or more accurately, duds --- at the Supreme Court today as there were yesterday. In part, that's because the topics under review aren't as explosive: severability and Medicaid expansion. That doesn't mean that the day has been entirely uninteresting, either, as Philip Klein reports for the Washington Examiner: Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court this morning considered what to do with the rest of President Obama's national health care law if its individual health insurance mandate is struck down. Though it was difficult to get a clear read on...

Kennedy apprears to be very critical of Mandate provision. LA times headline "Justices signal possible trouble ahead for health insurance mandate," they note: “Are there any limits,” asked Justice Anthony Kennedy... “If the government can do this, what else can it … do,” Scalia asked? Politico headline, "No Fifth Vote Yet to Uphold," ... "The conservatives all express skepticism, some significant. They doubt that there is any limiting principle.

It's been one year, six months, and eight days since it happened. White-hot tempers have cooled. Dire predictions are rarer. Unlike many tumultuous situations, which in retrospect appear unworthy of our ire, the intensity that accompanied the passage of ObamaCare was well-suited to the size of the cause. Throughout the Western world, government-run health care has served to catalyze a permanent leftist political climate. Unlike the relatively limited nature of our current welfare state (which is already bankrupting the nation), the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is designed to reach across all age demographics and into nearly every income...

 On June 16 the U.S. Supreme Court sent a case (U.S. v. Bond) back to a lower court on Tenth Amendment grounds. The ruling, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy (the Court's "swing vote"), hints that ObamaCare just might be ruled unconstitutional. How? Justice Kennedy's opinion in U.S. v. Bond showed he still believes the federal government is restricted by the enumerated powers as listed in the U.S. Constitution. His viewpoint was expressed in a case the Lifetime network is probably making a movie about right now.            In this case, Carol Anne Bond learned that her best friend, Myrlinda Haynes, was...

fter decades of battles in the political system, and now in the courts, the fate of health care reform is likely to come down to the vote of one man: Justice Anthony Kennedy. As the swing vote on a Supreme Court closely divided between liberals and conservatives, he will almost certainly have the power to uphold or strike down the “individual mandate” that is a centerpiece of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). Nobody seems able to predict what Kennedy will do, and even after years studying his jurisprudence, I am also unable to say with any certainty. I can,...

Jan Brewer is asking a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the federal lawsuit. | AP Photo Close By SCOTT WONG | 10/6/10 9:57 AM EDT Updated: 10/6/10 7:21 PM EDT In a new twist in the fight over Arizona’s immigration law, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday asked a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit to overturn the law. The move comes in response to a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling issued Monday, allowing nearly a dozen Latin American countries — Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador,...

Increasingly, Justice Anthony Kennedy has become the most important member of the Supreme Court. After the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor, Kennedy serves as the swing vote between the conservative and liberal blocs on the Court, siding more often with conservatives (but not often enough for their taste). At 74, though, Kennedy is at an age when most men think of retirement — and his departure would set off a political firestorm on Capitol Hill the likes of which haven’t been seen since Clarence Thomas endured his trial by fire in the Senate.And maybe that’s why Kennedy tells close friends...

President Obama may get liberal Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, but conservative swing-voter Anthony Kennedy says he's not going anywhere anytime soon. Justice Kennedy, who turns 74 this month, has told relatives and friends he plans to stay on the high court for at least three more years - through the end of Obama's first term, sources said. That means Kennedy will be around to provide a fifth vote for the court's conservative bloc through the 2012 presidential election. If Obama loses, Kennedy could retire and expect a Republican President to choose a conservative justice. Kennedy, appointed by President...

The Supreme Court yesterday confronted a fact in constitutional law that has been hard to justify: How is it that the First Amendment protects obscene speech, nude dancing and talk radio -- but permits Congress to shut down independent political messages from corporations and labor unions? Why do those groups get second-class status when politics, rather than, say, simulated child porn, is the topic? In the Citizens United case, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a five-justice majority, couldn't be clearer: The federal ban on such independent expenditures is unconstitutional on its face: "Speech restrictions based on the identity of the...

In 2007 Justice Anthony Kennedy decided that what we exhale every second of our lives, carbon dioxide (CO2), is a pollutant. As a result of this one man's opinion, Americans will be subjected to government regulations that will change their world. In a 5-4 decision written by Justice John Paul Stevens the U.S. Supreme Court said the language of the Clean Air Act, defining "air pollutant" is a "sweeping definition, and the greenhouse gases", namely carbon dioxide, "fit well within the definition of air pollutant." It was the vote of Anthony Kennedy, who joined with the liberal block that decided...

Today the Supreme Court decided the odd, Grisham-like story of Caperton v. Massey—finding that a justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court should have recused himself in an appeal involving a party who spent millions of dollars to put him on the bench. But lost in all the high-power judgery is this fascinating fact: Both the majority and the dissent are pretty worried about judicial bias, the appearance of judicial bias, confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, and what to do about public confidence in human-seeming judges. These are precisely the issues Judge Sonia Sotomayor has openly grappled with...

A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, designed to protect minorities in states with a history of discrimination, is at substantial risk of being struck down as unconstitutional, judging from the questioning on Wednesday at the Supreme Court. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose vote is likely to be crucial, was a vigorous participant in the argument, asking 17 questions that were almost consistently hostile to the approach Congress had taken to renewing the act in 2006. “Congress has made a finding that the sovereignty of Georgia is less than the sovereign dignity of Ohio,” Justice Kennedy said....

Less than a week before its October term is set to begin, the US Supreme Court became a spectacle of sound and fury on Wednesday over a landmark decision handed down three months ago declaring that the death penalty for child rapists is cruel and unusual punishment. At issue was whether the high court would revisit the landmark 5-to-4 decision after revelations last summer that contradicted the majority justices' conclusion that a "national consensus" had emerged against the death penalty for the rape of a child. The June 25 decision said only six states had laws authorizing capital punishment for...

Kennedy is the court's most important swing vote and its worst justice. He expects the nation to bend to his moral whimsy. He said "You know, in any given year, we may make more important decisions than the legislative branch does - precluding foreign affairs, perhaps." He was wise to include the "perhaps," in light of the recent Guantanamo decision. He went on to note how judges need an "understanding that you have an opportunity to shape the destiny of the country." So much for country's destiny being shaped by a free people acting through their legislative institutions.On any politically...

July 4, 2008 The Manifold Dangers of a Liberal Supreme Court Christopher AdamoAs far back as Sun Tzu, military strategists have well understood the concept that victory in war does not require the destruction of one's enemy, but merely convincing that enemy that destruction is inevitable if the fight continues. Similarly, in a dictatorship, absolute control is neither necessary nor, in most cases, even possible. All that is needed for the dictator to endure is the presumption among the underlings that the leader does indeed hold a monopoly of power. It is a point that Americans ought to seriously...

When our rulers on the Supreme Court invalidated the State of Louisiana's death penalty for child rapists — in the case appropriately titled Kennedy v. Louisiana, decided June 25 — Justice Kennedy and the Court's liberal bloc insisted that the Eighth Amendment does not mean what it meant when it was adopted. Rather, the question of what is "cruel and unusual" punishment is answered by "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Such gobbledygook is the mark of Left-liberal hauteur. In an arrested-development society, getting older is not necessarily maturing, and chronological maturation is...

Our Worst Justice by Rich Lowry Why did the Founders bother toiling in the summer heat of Philadelphia in 1787 writing a Constitution when they could have relied on the consciences of Supreme Court justices like Anthony Kennedy instead? Kennedy is the Supreme Court's most important swing vote and its worst justice. Whatever else you think of them, a Justice Scalia or Ginsburg has a consistent judicial philosophy, while Kennedy expects the nation to bend to his moral whimsy. With apologies to Louis XIV, Kennedy might as well declare "la constitution, c'est moi!" In a 2005 interview, Kennedy said of...

Conservatives were, rightly, thrilled by the recent Supreme Court decision that affirmed our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Not so fast. Of the four important decisions the court has rendered in this term, three of them have gone the wrong way. Let's first take a brief look at each of these four cases. Then let us examine Justice Anthony Kennedy's thinking in these cases. Kennedy was either the deciding "swing vote" or the determining factor in each one. The only case correctly decided was (1) District of Columbia v. Heller. Justice Scalia wrote the Heller decision, which holds...

In the United States today we no longer enjoy the rule of law but instead the rule of lawyers — robed lawyers with the exalted title "justice" — but still unelected lawyers enacting their own policy preferences. Before their commonsense decision in the Second Amendment case, a different complement of justices (Justice Anthony Kennedy siding with the liberals) demonstrated what a flimsy hold the words of the Constitution have on our jurisprudence. In fact, when you consider that the court is pretty well divided between four liberals and four conservatives with Justice Kennedy swinging from one side to another as...

Don’t You Know There’s a War Going On? Jeffrey Imm I am sending U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy a framed copy of a photograph of the remains of the World Trade Center West building after the 9/11 attacks with a note "Don't You Know There's A War On?" The Real Headline: "U.S. Supreme Court Doesn't Think We Are At War with Jihad"On June 12, 2008, the majority on the Supreme Court ruled in "Boumediene v. Bush," that habeas corpus rights guaranteed to American citizens under the Constitution will be extended to foreign Jihadist enemy combatants currently held at the...

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy arrives for a roundtable discussion titled 'Making Law Work for Everyone', Friday, June 13, 2008, at the Organization of American (OAS) in Washington. In writing for the court majority on the Supreme Court's decision on Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, Kennedy acknowledged the terrorism threat the country faces and the administration's justification for the detentions, but he declared, 'The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.' (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrive for a roundtable discussion titled 'Making...

WASHINGTON - Americans have a right to own guns, Supreme Court justices declared Tuesday in a historic and lively debate that could lead to the most significant interpretation of the Second Amendment since its ratification two centuries ago. Governments have a right to regulate those firearms, a majority of justices seemed to agree. But there was less apparent agreement on the case they were arguing: whether Washington's ban on handguns goes too far. The justices dug deeply into arguments on one of the Constitution's most hotly debated provisions as demonstrators shouted slogans outside. Guns are an American right, argued one...

SAN FRANCISCO - Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy painted a dismal picture of injustice and lack of opportunity in much of the world, then told lawyers Monday that they must do something. Kennedy used a ceremony in which the American Bar Association presented him its highest award to talk about the plight of rape victims who must pay a fee before they file a complaint, young girls used by their families to have sex with tourists, prisoners who develop gangrene because they get no medical care. "The rule of law and your own freedom are not secure unless you address...

Undoubtedly, the most significant aspect of the Supreme Court's April decision in Gonzales v. Carhart was that it narrowly upheld Congress' "partial-birth abortion" ban. That said, Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion may affect America more for what it said about abortion than what it decreed about the law of abortion. The case appears to have opened up a new phase in abortion jurisprudence -- one in which abortion is largely permitted though disdained. This is not surprising, because Carhart represents the first recent occasion on which Kennedy set our national abortion policy. What may be surprising is how greatly both sides...

WASHINGTON - Iraq remains chaotic and immigration overhaul faces an uncertain fate. But if President Bush wants to sing the old tune, “They can’t take that away from me” he can turn to the Supreme Court where his appointees Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito sit. As the high court nears the end of its 2006-2007 term, the impact of Bush’s appointees is becoming clearer. In high profile-decisions, Roberts and Alito have bolstered the conservative wing, which includes Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and occasionally Justice Anthony Kennedy. Former Reagan administration Justice Department official Doug Kmiec,...

The next U.S. president could reshape the Supreme Court, where the two oldest members are liberals and volatile decisions like abortion now hinge on a single swing vote. The possible sea change has already surfaced 18 months before the November 2008 election and could develop into a major campaign issue for Democrats who want to move the court to the left and Republicans who hope to plant it firmly in the conservative camp. The U.S. high court is now evenly split between conservative and liberal justices, who have been divided by 5-4 votes on abortion rights, the death penalty and...

The key to comprehending the Supreme Court's ruling today in Gonzales v. Carhart upholding the federal partial-birth abortion ban is a mastery not of constitutional law but of a literary type. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion is less about the scope of abortion regulation than an announcement of an astonishing new test: Hereinafter, on the morally and legally thorny question of abortion, the proposed rule should be weighed against the gauzy sensitivities of that iconic literary creature: the Inconstant Female. Kennedy invokes The Woman Who Changed Her Mind not once, but twice today. His opinion is a love song to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A justice who may cast the decisive vote on the closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sharply criticized using race to decide where students go to school. "You're characterizing each student by reason of the color of his or her skin," Justice Anthony Kennedy told a lawyer for one of two school districts arguing before the high court. "It seems to me that that should only be, if ever allowed, allowed as a last resort." The Supreme Court justices considered the two cases that could affect millions of students nationwide by deciding whether the U.S. Constitution's...

The Supreme Court on Monday moved to reinstate the death penalty for a California man convicted of murdering a 19-year-old woman during a burglary. Justices reversed an appeals court ruling that threw out Fernando Belmontes' death sentence because the trial judge misled jurors who were considering whether to give Belmontes the death penalty or life in prison. The 5-4 decision was the court's first since starting its new term in October. Justice Anthony Kennedy said it was implausible to conclude that jurors failed to take all the evidence into account before settling on a sentence of death. Belmontes beat Steacy...

WASHINGTON, November 8, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Moments after the hearing of oral arguments in the partial-birth abortion case before the United States Supreme Court today, a pro-life lawyer involved in the case is predicting a "major victory". Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), said that he is convinced the ban on partial birth abortion will be ruled constitutional. The ACLJ has filed amicus briefs in both cases before the Supreme Court - including one on behalf of some 80 members of Congress - including the sponsors of the federal ban on the gruesome...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A pro-life attorney says he thinks next week's hearing on a Congressional partial-birth abortion ban will lead to a vote that will ultimately hinge on Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy voted with the minority in upholding a Nebraska ban in a previous case but the pro-abortion justice's vote is never certain. His vote may also be less certain with the court's previous deciding vote in close cases -- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- now retired. The high court is slated to hear oral arguments in cases on Wednesday involving two of the federal challenges abortion advocates filed...

When Anthony M. Kennedy takes his seat among the black-robed justices of the Supreme Court, his presence behind the raised mahogany bench is remarkably unremarkable. There is nothing of the buttoned-down manner of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the professorial mien of Ruth Bader Ginsburg or the biting wit of Antonin Scalia. Genial and unassuming, Justice Kennedy poses questions without any display of theatrics. Outside the courthouse, tourists have been known to enlist his help snapping photos, unaware that they are pressing a justice into service. Yet after 18 years on the court, at 70, Justice Kennedy has emerged...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative and often decisive vote, was hospitalized for a stent procedure after experiencing mild chest pains, a court spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Kennedy, 70, underwent "a routine procedure" at Washington Hospital Center on September 2. "This was a revision to a stent procedure performed in November 2005," she said in a brief statement. Arberg said there was no evidence of any heart damage. She said Kennedy was discharged from the hospital on Sunday morning and had returned to his duties at the court, which is currently in recess....

Aug 6, 1:13 AM EDT Kennedy: Jury's Out on U.S. Democracy By MARK NIESSE Associated Press Writer HONOLULU (AP) -- The United States is not making the case for freedom, democracy and Western law to the rest of the world, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said Saturday. "Make no mistake, there's a jury that's out. In half the world, the verdict is not yet in. The commitment to accept the Western idea of democracy has not yet been made, and they are waiting for you to make the case," Kennedy said in an address to the American Bar Association. Kennedy,...

On July 1st, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) finished its term until October. The history books may refer to the present court as the “Roberts Court,” named so after current Chief Justice John Roberts, but many analysts are talking about Justice Kennedy. “It is impossible to overstate the importance of Justice Kennedy,” Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News told the audience at the Heritage Foundation last Thursday. A panel of journalists, including Mr. Stohr, Charles Lane of The Washington Post, and Stephen Henderson of McClatchy Newspapers, focused most of their remarks on “Justice Kennedy’s Hamlet moment,” as Mr....

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ordered Friday that his temporary stay protecting the Mount Soledad cross extend until state and federal courts can hear the city of San Diego's appeal this fall. In blocking a federal judge's order that the city remove the cross by Aug. 1 or face a daily fine of $5,000, Kennedy also indicated that the full court may want to review the controversial case. Kennedy said the court, which refused three years ago to get involved in the dispute, may consider it because of two new factors favorable to cross proponents. He cited legislation to...

<p>WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court intervened Monday to save a large cross on city property in southern California.</p> <p>A lower court judge had ordered the city of San Diego to remove the cross or be fined $5,000 a day.</p> <p>Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, acting for the high court, issued a stay while supporters of the cross continue their legal fight.</p>

President Bush finally got to reshape the Supreme Court during its just-completed 2005-06 term, appointing its first two new members in more than a decade. But he didn't have much immediate success in changing its direction. Bush's appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, lived up to expectations that they would ally with the court's conservative faction. The administration's hopes for a rightward shift on an already-conservative court were largely checked, however, by the pivotal figure of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy's role was illustrated most dramatically Thursday, the final day of the court's term, when he joined a...

It was the O'Connor court. Now it may be the Kennedy court. The Supreme Court's just-concluded 2005-2006 term was a historic one, in which two new justices, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr., changed the court's style and ideological balance. But by the end of the term, it was clear that the main impact of the turnover was to enhance the influence of a justice who has been at the court since 1988, 70-year-old Anthony M. Kennedy. With the departure of centrist Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court is now frequently split between two four-justice...

As the Supreme Court wraps up its session, there has been so far fairly little attention paid to the fact that this is when U.S. Supreme Court retirements are typically announced. All of the last 14 retirements were announced between May 14th and October 1st of their respective years; the last to retire outside of those dates was Charles Whittaker, whose doctor ordered him to retire on account of a worsening disability making it impossible for him to sit at his bench. Of those 14, 9 announced their retirement between June 12 and August 3rd, a space of only seven...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court has had divisive rulings this year on the environment, police power and whistleblowers, and the justices are not even through with their hardest cases. The high court is on a tight deadline to finish before July, when justices begin a three-month break that provides time for traveling, teaching classes, writing books and relaxing. As usual, justices have left some of the most significant cases to the very end. There are 10 rulings left, on issues from a president's wartime powers, capital punishment, Texas' political boundaries and the insanity defense. The past year has been...

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy lashed out at our humble profession last week, castigating editorial writers whom he said frequently "misinterpret" the Court's reasoning, according to an article in Monday's Washington Post. The Justice didn't single out any newspaper, though we'll admit to having referred to his jurisprudence on more than one occasion as "protean." We'd humbly reply to Justice Kennedy that it is precisely this trait that has invited such media mau-mauing. While nominated as a conservative by Ronald Reagan, Justice Kennedy has proven on the High Court that he is open for intellectual rent: from his flip-flop on...

At last week's oral argument in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, probably the term's most important case, the outcome was all but decided when Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke. He strongly suggested by his questions that he would join the four moderate justices in rejecting the Bush administration's position on a key aspect of its war-on-terror powers. That would be enough, because these days, the law is pretty much what Justice Kennedy says it is. With Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, there is a new swing justice in town. If the court's two newest members, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito...

Students shouldn't take freedom for granted, and the Constitution belongs to them as well as lawyers and judges, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said at Farrington High School yesterday. They need to know the meaning of freedom and pass it onto others less fortunate for democracy to flourish, Kennedy said. He quoted Thomas Jefferson, who once said: "Democracy depends on a virtuous enlightened people." "Overall, I'm very concerned that people think democracy is on automatic pilot -- and it isn't," Kennedy said, before addressing a group of about 150 Farrington and Kahuku High juniors and seniors. "It...

The most powerful man in America has the last name of Kennedy, but thankfully is not named Teddy and is no relation to JFK. You could make the case that the President or the Federal Chairman is more powerful, but for my money Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy is now the most powerful man in America. With the appointment of Justice Alito, the Supreme Court is split with 4 solidly liberal justices and 4 solidly conservative justices, leaving Kennedy to decide the controversial cases. Justice Anthony Kennedy was born July 23, 1936 has been a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court...

Kennedy may check the Supreme Court's tilt toward the right.The Swing Set: Kennedy chats with O’Connor, who may have penned her last ruling this weekJan. 30, 2006 issue - When conservative Washington lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court talk about "the Greenhouse Effect," they don't mean global warming. The Greenhouse in question is Linda Greenhouse, the longtime and esteemed Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times. The "effect" is to subtly push Supreme Court justices to the left. Unless a jurist comes to the court with very strongly held, or even fixed, conservative views, there is a tendency...

Who'll Be the Supreme Court's Next Swinger? Howard J. Bashman Special to Law.com 01-17-2006 When Justice Sandra Day O'Connor finally retires from serving on the U.S. Supreme Court, the high court's center of gravity unquestionably will shift. And some other justice will become the Court's swinger -- that is, the key swing vote. For reasons explained in my essay from last week, I don't expect Samuel A. Alito Jr. to become the Court's newest centrist. Indeed, the smart money is on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to be the Court's swing vote going forward. Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter,...

Anthony Kennedy—the new Sandra Day O'Connor. Lost in last week's cacophony about the critical role of Sandra Day O'Connor as sole and exclusive swing voter on the U.S. Supreme Court was any sign of respect for the other sole and exclusive swing voter on the U.S. Supreme Court: Anthony M. Kennedy. Kennedy's majority opinion in today's big physician-assisted-suicide case serves as the perfect reminder of who's going to call the shots in the near future. The 6-3 opinion in Gonzales v. Oregon—a decision upholding Oregon's physician-assisted-suicide law from attack by the Attorney General's Office—sharply outlines the court's Anthony Kennedy-shaped future....

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy keenly relishes acting as an ethical or moral beacon. He boasts that the high court's policy encyclicals endow the justices with greater power than elected lawmakers, with the possible exception of foreign affairs. Justice Kennedy's playing Platonic Guardian under the umbrella of the Constitution might be redeemed were he blessed with uncommon wisdom and dazzling insights. But his observations about the human condition are a best jejune and at worst sophomoric. Justice Kennedy illustrates why President George W. Bush should stick to Supreme Court nominees in the mold of Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia and Clarence...