KENNEDY, ANTHONY M(CLEOD)

born July 23, 1936, Sacramento, Calif., U.S. associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (from 1988). Kennedy graduated from Stanford University, Calif., in 1958 and earned his law degree from Harvard University in 1961. He was called to the bar in 1962 and subsequently practiced law in San Francisco and Sacramento. He was appointed to the Federal Court of Appeals in 1975 by President Gerald Ford. By 1987 Kennedy had become a prominent potential candidate to fill a vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, but President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert H. Bork instead. Bork's outspoken conservative views on constitutional law led to his rejection by the Senate. The quieter Kennedy was eventually nominated and confirmed and, in his early court record, proved to be markedly conservative. In his first term he voted with fellow hard-line conservatives William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia more than 90 percent of the time, and in subsequent years he tended to vote in the direction of nullifying affirmative action, abortion rights, and other liberal policies.