Dahlia Lithwick on Anthony Kennedy:
It's Kennedy who was labeled by the right as "the most dangerous man in America," and Kennedy whose name is most often associated with the word "impeachment." Kennedy uniquely engenders hysteria, in part because of his tendency to think grandly and write sweepingly. O'Connor's case-by-case approach allows the right to loathe her on a case-by-case basis. But Kennedy's tendency to tilt the whole universe on its axis with a stroke of the pen sends his enemies into orbit.[...]
Jeffrey Toobin at The New Yorker recently explained why Kennedy sometimes parts company with his buddies on the court's hard right wing. Of the court's conservatives, only he has an abiding affection for all things foreign, including—to the intense chagrin of some of his colleagues—foreign law. Kennedy's pragmatic reason for citing to foreign courts as a means of fostering worldwide legal respect is a part of his rather grand vision for the lofty role of the Supreme Court in government. He is invariably parodied as the court's great white agonizer; when pondering a vote in a case, he is said to walk the court's ramparts for hours, like an extremely tall Hamlet. For better or worse, he takes the reputation of the court extremely seriously, both in the eyes of the world and the nation.
But another key to understanding Kennedy's role as a swing voter is simpler: He just really, really likes the power. In his book Closed Chambers, Edward Lazarus, a former clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun, writes that Kennedy bragged about his ability to occupy one of the pivotal positions on the court, deliberately and craftily espousing views at conference that would make him a "necessary but distinctive fifth vote for a majority." Like O'Connor, Kennedy may be a legal politician before he is an ideological purist. And with O'Connor soon to be out of the picture, Kennedy may now get the chance to really make some constitutional hay.
