Justice Kennedy

Well, it took a few days, but the Supreme Court coverage is finally beginning to focus on Justice Kennedy. In today's Washington Post, staff-writer Charles Lane writes the following:

"All eyes were on Justice Sandra Day O'Connor after
the Supreme Court wrapped up its term this week.
But while O'Connor and her centrist legacy may have
been at the center of attention because of her surprise
retirement announcement Friday, the center of power
during the term was one chair to her left, where Justice
Anthony M. Kennedy -- the court's other center-right
swing voter -- sits."

This is the point I made right after O'Connor announced her retirement. For at least the last few terms, Kennedy has been the more important swing voter on the Court. If O'Connor is replaced by a Scalia/Thomas style conservative, Kennedy will be THE remaining swing vote on the Court, and will therefore be in a position of enormous power and influence. As the Post article points out, in the last term, O'Connor actually found herself on the dissenting side of the 5-4 divide in the three most important cases. And Kennedy (who was the deciding vote in those cases) authored opinions that were surprisingly liberal in tone and contrary to his own previous decisions. If Kennedy continues his currect leftward trajectory, it may turn out that O'Connor's retirement makes very little difference to the Court's jurisprudence.