The Sweet Mystery of Anthony Kennedy - Federalist Society Event

Salt Lake City Lawyers Chapter

Speaker: 

• Ilya Shapiro, Editor-in-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review

Speaker: 

• Ilya Shapiro, Editor-in-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review

Anyone who has even a passing interest in the Supreme Court knows that, with the departure of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor a decade ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy became the Court’s swing justice. In the highly charged cases that split on “ideological” lines—with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito on the “conservative” side and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan on the “liberal” side—Justice Kennedy inevitably provides the deciding vote.

On abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, campaign finance, affirmative action, or the host of issues that don’t make the front pages but do affect millions of lives and billions of dollars, Kennedy’s view becomes the law of the land. Appellate advocates in the close cases aim their briefs at him, but what do we really know about his jurisprudence? Is there any coherence or consistency, or does he just call balls and strikes in a strike zone all his own? Maybe he’s simply libertarian, frustrating both liberals and conservatives, depending on the issue.

The editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, Ilya Shapiro, will try to make sense of this enigmatic jurist, explaining the good, the bad, and the ugly of Anthony Kennedy’s 27 years on the high court.

$20 buys your lunch, and we are pending approval for 1 hour of CLE for this event.