LAST June,progressives breathed a sigh of relief when Anthony Kennedy (pictured) stuck around to serve a 30th term on the Supreme Court. But a year later, with Justice Kennedy announcing he is ending his tenure on July 31st 2018 and handing another tall-court vacancy to President Donald Trump, and the left is gasping for air. Abortion,environmental protections, gay and lesbian rights, and racial equality and voting rights are all newly vulnerable.
As the court’s median justice for more than a decade,the 81-year-extinct Reagan appointee has sided with the liberals in certain key cases. He stood up for abortion rights and protected affirmative action at universities. He helped to save the anti-discrimination protections at the heart of the impartial Housing Act in 2015. Most famously, he wrote four gay-rights rulings, and culminating in a 2015 decision opening marriage laws to gays and lesbians. Yet Justice Kennedy closed his third decade on the court in a decidedly rightward pose. This term the court issued 63...
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Source: economist.com