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In his new memoir, “Life, Law & Liberty” (to be printed Tuesday by Simon & Schuster), former Justice Anthony Kennedy writes about his life’s journey to turning into a lawyer, a decide, and the deciding vote on among the Supreme Court docket’s most consequential selections.
Learn an excerpt beneath, and don’t miss Erin Moriarty’s interview with Kennedy on “CBS Sunday Morning” October 12!
“Life, Law & Liberty” by Anthony Kennedy
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Prologue
Sacramento is the place my pondering started about equality, liberty, and freedom. My spouse, Mary, was additionally born and raised in Sacramento. We share cherished reminiscences of youthful years, college days, our marriage ceremony in 1963, and elevating our three kids within the metropolis we liked. Sacramento is the place the place we stood, in each the actual and symbolic sense, to seek out beginnings and uncover views past. It’s the place my father practiced legislation, and the place I — far too quickly — stepped into his place to take over his apply. It’s the place my time on the bench started, and the place so a lot of my beliefs about our nation, in regards to the rule of legislation, and in regards to the world had been shaped.
The West, after all, was imperfect, and is imperfect. Neither the place nor the idea was something near idyllic. There have been and are scorpions and snakes aplenty. On the frontier, simply as elsewhere, racial, ideological, and gender prejudice had been all too frequent and injurious. However maybe greater than elsewhere, the frontier contained the promise of one thing higher, the promise of neighborhood, of tolerance, of progress and ambition, all tempered by the realms during which the fact fell brief, a lot of that are mentioned within the pages forward. However it’s within the West the place I discovered to see folks as people, past their race or faith or gender, past whom they liked or how they selected to stay their lives, past the weather that would have pushed us aside. I started to attempt to perceive the frequent beliefs that introduced us collectively.
Solely 116 women and men in our nation’s historical past have served as justices on the U.S. Supreme Court docket. Rising up, it was simple to consider these justices as past reproach. And the inequity that they had been all white males on the time was sluggish to daybreak upon me. However my picture was of 9 sages behind closed doorways, ruling on among the most central, and probably divisive, points in society. After which, sooner or later, after years spent practising legislation, instructing, after which judging on the Ninth Circuit bench, abruptly one of many 9 was me.
Actuality set in: I hoped to nonetheless be the particular person I had at all times been. A husband, a father, a diligent reader. However nonetheless only a fallible particular person. For all my years on the bench — and it offers me delight to say that my service as a justice on the Court docket was the fifteenth longest in U.S. historical past — I took the accountability critically, as did every of my colleagues, regardless of how a lot and the way usually we agreed or disagreed. In doing my greatest to interpret and apply the Structure and the legislation to the instances that got here earlier than us, my hope was that my life within the West would assist give me the angle wanted to be trustworthy and truthful.
Rising up within the West taught me, for instance, that the inventive energies of an amazing folks can’t be realized until the realms of financial freedom and private liberty are revered. It jogged my memory that central to a person’s declare to private liberty is the best to truthful remedy and to be protected against arbitrary authorities motion. The West jogged my memory that essentially the most profitable businessperson and the lowest-paid employee are every entitled to this primary dignity, a dignity that helped People construct the frontier and continues to assist us right this moment.
The West is so central to my self-understanding that it appears an applicable place to start. This Western boy did later go East. However my hope was to remain at all times near these Western concepts of liberty and justice. This memoir is my approach of placing these concepts on paper, of explaining how a Western boy grew to become a lawyer, a decide, and a justice, in search of at all times to honor our nation’s founding rules and to take action with civility, exhausting work, tolerance, and the moral basis our nation should protect.
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“Life, Law & Liberty” by Anthony Kennedy
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