Skip to Main Content

Anthony Kennedy

Photograph from the Collection of the U.S. Supreme Court

About The Author

Anthony M. Kennedy was born in Sacramento, California, July 23, 1936. He completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University and the London School of Economics. After graduating from Stanford, he received his LLB from Harvard Law School. He was in private practice in San Francisco from 1961 to 1963, and then in Sacramento, from 1963 to 1975. From 1965 to 1988, he was a professor of constitutional law at the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. He has served in numerous positions during his career, including as a member of the California Army National Guard in 1961, the board of the Federal Judicial Center, and two committees of the Judicial Conference of the United States: the committee now named the Advisory Committee on Codes of Conduct, from 1979 to 1987, and the Committee on Pacific Territories from 1979 to 1990, which he chaired from 1982 to 1990. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1975. President Reagan later nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat February 18, 1988. Justice Kennedy left active service on the Supreme Court and assumed senior status on July 31, 2018.

Books by Anthony Kennedy