YouSaid · the spoken record

Anthony Kennedy

lines on the record: 27
first: 2025-11-13
most recent: 2025-11-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, usually I do Because it's interesting, this is both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. If you read the Constitution of the United States, sit down cover to cover. It'll take you about two and a half hours, and you'll fall asleep for part of it. The preamble, the preface, is simply beautiful. The Constitution It's fascinating that has lasted for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year. And we're going to have a time capsule that people will open 250 years from now. If we put the Constitution of the United States... In the time capsule, 250 years from now, will it still be known? Will it still be respected? Will it still be the way in which our nation defines ourselves? It has been for the last 250 years.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When the authors of the Constitution sat down for a period of, what, three months in Philadelphia, if they had known all of the details of what freedom means, they would have put it down. But they were thoughtful enough to know that the components of freedom, the components of liberty, are something we must learn over time. So they used spacious words like life, liberty, and property. Incidentally, lawyers even sometimes make us think, we think of life liberty and happiness. That's the declaration of independence. The Constitution talked about life liberty and property. Why doesn't the Constitution talk about happiness? Because that's judicially unenforceable. Although perhaps judges would be ready to try.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They should no more precisely how collegial it really is. We know that if you and I are just together, we know we would disagree. We're supposed to disagree. That's our job. But the question is how we disagree. The interaction on the court is much more fascinating than most people know. You hear things that you had not thought of before and you see new possibilities for the law because after you decide something, there's a whole new realm for which to explore the future. It was my privilege to serve with 17 different judges.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the lawyer said, Oh, my lord, I would not wish to precipitate such a calamitous event. So they go on like that. But being a trial judge in England or the United States is, I think, maybe the best job in the world.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The people that apply to you have wonderful resumes, and they're toward the top of their class, and they've usually clerked with a court of appeals judge or a district court judge. It was important for me often to try to hire clerks who've been with a district court. District courts, in a way, a United States District Court is the best job in the world. You're the only judge you run your own empire. And the trial judge gets to see real people. He gets to see jurors and witnesses and attorneys. On the Court of Appeal, we don't have. If you ever go to England, we were there one time and listening to the argument, and the judge said, if council begins to quote the maxims of statutory construction, I shall be forced to leave the room.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just it would be, we were together so long, you knew what I knew, then you knew what I knew you were going to say, and we could more or less begin from there. And we know sometimes we wanted to really work hard to convince each other, which we sometimes did in conference. We didn't always go into conference knowing exactly how the cases come out.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't think so. But he had a wonderful sense of humor. He asked me, he wanted to have a state California ballot proposal which would cut government standards. And so he asked me to draft the amendment. And I said, I don't know any about budgets or bonds or special appropriations. He said, oh, this is an amendment to the Constitution and you teach constitutional law. I said, no, no, no. Constitutional right teaches has nothing to do with what you're talking about. You mean you can't write something that we're spending too much money? So as it turned out, I told him that if he could, there were two or three very brilliant people that were acquaintances of mine. Pretty soon Ray got up and talked. He could absorb a briefing David better than any client ever did.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, well, maybe so and maybe no, but if you get as a lawyer and I had small cases, but I would go in the counties around Sacramento to appear in court. And if you get the reputation as a judge maker or a judge breaker, it's not good that judges are going to either lean over toward you or lean maybe against you to show that he's there. And so I just didn't want that. So I said, don't ever ask me who should be appointed a judge.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we first met before he was running for governor at some event in San Francisco and had some friends who were mutual friends that we began to talk. I said there's a few things you should never ask. I said, one is about politics. I said, I know about the way most people know about it, but so far as all the insider things that you had, and he had one of the best political teams ever assembled. And he didn't need any advice from me. So I said, don't ask me about politics. I said, second, don't ever ask me who should be appointed a judge. And he said, that's where you can really help.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mary would never know what I was working on, what the case was, whether I was writing a majority or dissent. She didn't even know what the case was, and she'd read about it in the newspaper and said, oh, you decided that case. I said, well, yes.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mary was also from Sacramento. Our families knew each other. Mary's younger. And so we didn't date in high school because of that three and a half years as a pretty big thing. But we knew each other.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's important for me to go back home, bless my father, it was not well. It seemed to me important to help the family, and he wanted to at least begin, even if I reflect this second in San Francisco with a big firm. He wanted me to know what structure of the legal profession”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“make it up to 10 finest law professors in the country. Six or eight of them would have been at Harvard, which was simply Stanford was also”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were interested in our family and government. I learned to read it at a very early age, reading classes editor when I was eight or nine years old. And so I was a little bored in school, and my parents thought it would be a good idea The only page boy at the state senate.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“had come to Sacramento at Shend from San Francisco in order to work for the state government and she had been a teacher as well.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's of great concern to me that our civil discourse, our civic discourse, is not civil enough. Aristotle said that a democracy depends on an open debate where you respect the dignity of those with whom you disagree. He said, democracies only live if they are sustained over a period of time by a thoughtful rational discourse, a discourse in which you respect the dignity of those with whom you disagree. And I think that's a danger in our present day and age. What do they call it? Political identity. If you're a member of party X, then we just assume you have all these views and we don't like you or we do like you. This is not good for our public and for our national discourse. And we have to remember, David, the rest of the world looks at the United States to see how democracy works.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not the spouse could come to see the child in the hospital. The kids would have to say they don't have two parents. The stigma and the hardship on the children was a very important factor for those of us in the majority.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, people were upset about it, and it was a very difficult decision. When we were growing up, the gay movement was something we just didn't know much about or think much about. With my clerks, we spent days researching the history of marriage, reading the Bible, and great works of jurisprudence before the Christian era. For me, they... Important and perhaps deciding factor was the children. We were amazed to find that at first it looked like 75,000 children were adopted by gay parents and then it turned out they were in the hundreds of thousands and these children Were in states that did not allow gay marriage at a disadvantage. If the child was sick, only the adopting parent, not the”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The courts always hurt, it seems to me, if we look political. One of my concerns, my present day concerns is there's too much partisanship. Presidents appoint justices from their same party, but the partisanship should not be an overriding factor. What you look at is temperament, learning, background, reputation, whether or not you have those qualities of independence and caution that make for a good judge. And the partisanship is overemphasized in the Senate during the nomination process. They should not emphasize it so much.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not a difficult decision at all. Seven of us agree with you to take it. When you have a state court decide who's going to be the president of the United States and say, well, we're too busy to take it. Gore bought the case, not Bush. Gore bought the case. And the rule is that if you're unsuccessful in the lower court and you come to the Supreme Court, you're the so-called petitioner and your name is first. So it was Bush who bought the case of Supreme Court. It was called Bush versus But Gore was the one who started the case. Steven and us agreed that we should take the case More than a majority, six or seven agreed that there was a legal wrong. The question was how to remedy the legal wrong.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You want the views of your other colleagues To indicate that you're going in the right direction or the wrong direction. And there's a lot of interchange in the memo is that way, and that's how we, when they try to put a majority together. Sometimes you're assigned a majority opinion and you'll get a memo, dear Tony, I've read your draft opinion. It seems to me better to wait to read the dissent. He said, oh, that's going to go on. Or sometimes you write a dissent and say on the other way around, you convince other people.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's assume there's a majority and understand. Sometimes they're a lot more unanimous opinions than most people. The senior justice in the majority, assigned the majority, and the senior justice in the dissent assigned the dissent. There's any justice.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chief Justice speaks first the next most senior justice senior because he or she has been there the longest seniority is not by age but how long you've been around if you're the most junior and it's four to four it's very exciting because everybody is listening to what you're going to say”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're very careful not to talk to each other before impartialness to the lawyers and we don't want Creeks where you and I agree or you and I are disagree and I don't tell you what I talked to the other time. We don't do that.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to have four children. Called the rule of four. You need four justices to grant a petition for petitions for certiari is a motion to please take our case. And the court has thousands of petitions of certiora each year, but they select only those cases. Where the courts are in conflict and where they think the guidance, where we think the guidance of the court will be helpful.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Justice of the Supreme Court, and you won the court for 30 years About The biggest thrill is that you have only cases in which the law has been undecided. And you recognize that what you're doing is exploring the law. And you know that after you write what the law is or what you think it is, There's a whole new vista, a whole new realm to explore, and that's the fascinating part of it. We only take cases in which other courts have disagreed. In India, the Supreme Court has to take every case, and they have a 50,000 case backlog or something. But we select only the cases in which other courts have disagreed. And so that's the fascinating part, is that you are on the frontier. The law, and what you write is the beginning of a frontier because there's new things to”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wanted to write about Sacramento, a small town in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. My children grew up in Sacramento, but they didn't know about those earlier decades, and my grandchildren didn't know Sacramento at all. So it seemed to me interesting to me to write about that time in our culture. Our generation was right after the great generation. And the small town, there was a courtesy with the professionalism that we simply want to, I wanted to write about that. Supreme Court, the first thing many people do is they forget about the Sacramento part. They want to read some cases so they look. But we wanted to have this for our children and our grandchildren to read. As writing went on, it seemed to me people were saying that it might be of interest to others.”
2025-11-13 · The David Rubenstein Show · Justice Anthony Kennedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source