Anthony Kennedy Quotations

Sometimes it is easy... to enhance your prestige by not exercising your responsibility, but that's not been the tradition of the court.

Asking questions is an essential part of police investigation. In the ordinary sense a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment.

The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.

You have plaintiffs attorneys, you have defense attorneys. So there is no unified bar that will protect a particular judge who has made a courageous decision that's unpopular.

No one questions the validity, the urgency, the essentiality of the Voting Rights Act.

Democracy is something that you must learn each generation. It has to be taught.

I do not think that we should select judges based on a particular philosophy as opposed to temperament, commitment to judicial neutrality and commitment to other more constant values as to which there is general consensus.

As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

The case for freedom, the case for our constitutional principles the case for our heritage has to be made anew in each generation. The work of freedom is never done.

In the political context fair means somebody that will vote for the unions or for the business. It can't mean that in the judicial context or we're in real trouble.

From a legal and business perspective, it seems wrong to me,

has become a leading proponent of one of the most cosmopolitan, and controversial, trends in constitutional law: using foreign and international law as an aid in interpreting the U.S. Constitution.

Just the thought of a rap version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or 'Achy, Breaky Heart' is bound to make people smile.

It involved a constitutional issue of the gravest importance decided 4-3 by a state court on a federal issue that it was our responsibility to take the case, ... Sometimes it is easy, so it seems, to enhance your prestige by not exercising your responsibility, but that's not been the tradition of our court.

Our system presumes that there are certain principles that are more important than the temper of the times. And you must have a judge who is detached, who is independent, who is fair, who is committed only to those principles, and not public pressures of other sort. That's the meaning of neutrality.

It is beyond question that had this encounter occurred on the street it would be constitutional. The fact that an encounter takes place on a bus does not on its own transform standard police questioning of citizens into an illegal seizure,

You have this big windup, but what's the answer to the question?

The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.

When a juvenile commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.

Family members have a personal stake in honoring and mourning their dead and objecting to unwarranted public exploitation that, by intruding upon their own grief, tends to degrade the rites and respect they seek to accord to the deceased person who was once their own.

The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.

A law imposing criminal penalties on protected speech is a stark example of speech suppression.

There's a time for debate and a time for consensus. There's a time for advocacy and time for first principles.

There's substance to the point that sociological information is new. We have five years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more.

The court decided, based on its reading of our precedents, that the effects test of Lemon is violated whenever government action creates an identification of the state with a religion, or with religion in general, ...or when the effect of the governmental action is to endorse one religion over another, or to endorse religion in general.

It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

Some kinds of government regulation of private consensual homosexual behavior may face substantial constitutional challenge.

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.

Any time you burn a cross in Virginia, it's a crime?

The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.

The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.

Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.

The federal sentencing guidelines should be revised downward. By contrast to the guidelines, I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences. In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise and unjust.

The Constitution needs allegiance and loyalty and renewal and understanding with each generation, or else it's not going to last.

The Constitution doesn't belong to a bunch of judges and lawyers. It belongs to you.

There are some forty thousand children in California, according to the red brief, that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don't you think?

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

We should proceed carefully and appropriately in filling these important vacancies,

When Congress alters the federal balance, it must carefully consider the consequences of doing so.

Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today,

Sometimes it is easy...to enhance your prestige by not exercising your responsibility, but that's not been the tradition of the court.

A number of people would want to make us part of the American entertainment network.

This is not chauvinistic, ... Our purpose, our mission is to share democracy with the world.

In his personal relations he was unpretentious to the point of being casual, almost as if to put friends and colleagues at ease with his vast knowledge of history, remarkable grasp of the law, and a mind so precise he was at once formidable and delightful.

In this case, what we are concerned with is the intent in the little piece of paper called the ballot. Could each county have different results as to what intent is? ... It presents now a federal question to us, to determine whether or not there is new law.

The judiciary as an institution is faced with a new threat. Democracy is something that you must learn each generation.