Sure he's flawed, but Ed Lazarus makes the case that Justice Kennedy doesn't deserve the vitriol thrown at him on a regular basis. And that some of the other justices merit as much (if not more) criticism. He ends by contrasting the love and praise former Justice O'Connor gets, with the hate Justice Kennedy gets, and finds it strange given what many people purportedly want in a justice.
O'Connor's jurisprudential style reduced an awful lot of important questions to her own personal judgment, as well as her sense of the public's mood. Kennedy, by contrast, is endlessly struggling (albeit with mixed success) to subjugate his personal views to some larger principle, and he does so in a way that is largely independent of the vicissitudes of public opinion.Posted by armand at December 6, 2007 09:21 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Law and the Courts