President Trump is moving quickly to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose retirement announcement seems likely to create a solid conservative majority on the …
An analysis of Kennedy’s voting record during his three decades on the court shows that he voted with the court’s right wing in the majority of cases — including controversial, closely decided cases — throughout his career. And although he was likelier to side with the liberals once he became the court’s swing vote, legal experts say that he occupied the ideological middle ground on relatively few issues. “When you have an odd number of justices, someone is always going to be in the middle, and Kennedy was certainly in the middle a lot,” said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. But on many topics, Kennedy was as far to the right as his conservative colleagues. “The reality is that in a lot of cases, we may not see much of a difference between Kennedy and his successor.”
