Anthony M Kennedy

Nine years ago, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork went down to defeat in the Senate and the ripples from that epic fight are still being felt. In today's closely divided court, Bork could have created a solid conservative majority. Instead, almost as an afterthought, the vacant seat fell to a soft-spoken Sacramento judge named Anthony M. Kennedy. And on issues ranging from abortion, flag burning, school prayer, term limits and now gay rights, that switch has made all the difference.

In the spring of 1992, all that stood in the way of the Supreme Court's overruling the Roe vs. Wade decision was an Irish Catholic from Sacramento who firmly believed abortion was immoral. But a few weeks before the decision was to be announced, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy told his colleagues he had changed his mind -- not about the morality of abortion, but about the wisdom of overturning a long-standing constitutional right.

John G. Roberts Jr. may be the new chief justice, but the Supreme Court is not truly the Roberts court, at least not yet. In the most divisive cases before the court in the term that just ended, it was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy who determined the outcome every time. In unpredictable fashion, he sided some of the time with the court's conservative bloc and some of the time with its liberals.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was hospitalized over the weekend to have a new stent put in a coronary artery, court spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg said Tuesday. "There was no evidence of heart damage," she said, describing the procedure as routine. Kennedy, a 70-year-old native of Sacramento, emerged this year as the swing vote on the closely divided court after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

When Tony Kennedy was a child in Sacramento, a frequent guest at his family's home was the popular Republican governor, Earl Warren. Kennedy's father, Bud, was a prominent lobbyist and an admirer of the governor. He "always used to tell me what a principled man Earl Warren was," Kennedy recalled in an interview.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay intensified his criticism of the federal courts Tuesday, singling out Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's work from the bench as "incredibly outrageous" because he had relied on international law and done research on the Internet. DeLay said he thought there were a "lot of Republican-appointed judges that are judicial activists." The No.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said Saturday that America's security hinges on "the acceptance of the idea of freedom," and urged lawyers to promote democracy internationally. "It's an imperative of our moral security," Kennedy said in a speech at an American Bar Assn. ceremony dedicating the group's new headquarters in downtown Chicago. "We cannot fall behind in this struggle over ideas," said Kennedy, who has been on the Supreme Court since 1988.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy cemented Whittier Law School's move to Orange County on Tuesday with what amounts to a regal visit in the legal world. Kennedy taught two constitutional law courses and delivered the keynote address at the formal dedication of the new campus, which moved in August from Los Angeles to a former defense industry site on Harbor Boulevard.