American attorney and Judge, confirmed as Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court on 2/18/1988 stemming from a background of 13 years as Appellate Judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento, CA.
Kennedy, along with a brother and sister, were the children of parents who were pillars of the community of Land Park, California, a suburb of Sacramento. Dad was Anthony J. “Bud” Kennedy, a maverick lawyer and lobbyist who financed his legal education with his winnings at poker tables. Mother Gladys was a schoolteacher and homemaker who was a lifelong civic volunteer. The family home, a house that Bud Kennedy built himself, was a setting for local interaction; “a lot of business was done at the breakfast table or back patio.” Visitors included most of the community, including “the grocer stopping off for a drink after he’d closed his store. You could even find the priest in there.”
To combat his son’s chronic restlessness in elementary school, Bud got nine year old Kennedy a job as a page in the California State Senate in Sacramento, where the boy became fascinated by law. As an honor student at McClatchey High School, Kennedy won grants from the California Scholarship Foundation throughout all four years. He was such an upright teen that Bud offered him $100 in cash if he could manage to get himself arrested by the police. Altar boy Anthony opted to stay out of trouble and focus on his studies.
Entering Stanford University in 1954, he studied history and political science, immersing himself with constitutional law, resuming his fascination with law as a kid working in the Senate. His diligence paid off. Finishing his college credits in three years, Kennedy spent his fourth year at the London School of Economics, returning to Stanford to graduate with his class in 1958 with a B.A. degree and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Pursuing the studies of law, he earned an LL.B. and graduated cum laude in 1961 from Harvard Law School.
Kennedy began his legal career that same year as an associate with a law firm in San Francisco. Two years later his father died, at which point he moved back to Sacramento to help straighten out family matters and take over his dad’s law practice, of which he was the sole practitioner until he accepted partners in 1967.
His endless fascination with constitutional law led to teaching the same subject one night a week in 1963 at the University of the Pacific. Using the classroom as his oasis, one night a week expanded to a part-time teaching position which he held for 23 years. The Dean of the University called Kennedy a “human hydroelectric project” who “energizes the room when he is dealing with the law.” Standing ovations from students were not uncommon.
After passing the US Tax Court Bar in 1971, California Governor Ronald Reagan sought Kennedy’s expertise in drafting a tax limitation initiative known as Proposition 1. Rejected by voters in 1973, it was the precursor to the highly controversial Proposition 13, passing in 1978, which reduced Californian’s property tax by 57 percent.
Governor Reagan was so pleased with Kennedy’s work he recommended him for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Appointed by President Gerald Ford, Kennedy took the oath of office on 5/30/75. Serving as Federal Appellate Judge for 13 years, he earned a reputation for thoroughness and dedication to considering all sides of a case before making a decision. He ruled conservatively on civil rights, civil liberties, criminal law and the right to privacy. With views that were consistent with the Reagan administration, his judgments have aided the ability of police to make arrests and gather evidence while seeking to avoid undue infringement on personal liberty. Although widely known for his conservatism, he nonetheless championed equal rights. “I am absolutely committed to enforcing congressional policy to eliminate barriers against women. We do not have a free society where those barriers exist.”
In his personal life, Kennedy is known as being energetic, self-effacing and immensely polite; a practicing Roman Catholic. While enduring the three consecutive losses of his only brother in a surfing accident in Hawaii, his sister’s death of cancer, followed by his mother’s passing soon after, a childhood friend of Kennedy’s remarked, “It was probably typical of Tony that in the midst of all that loss, he was more notable for giving comfort to others than for needing it himself.”
Kennedy married fellow Stanford graduate and elementary school teacher Mary Jeanne Davis on 6/29/63. Their three children, Justin, Anthony and Kristin, all grew up in the house that Bud built.
Link to Wikipedia biography