Heritage Foundation Vice President John Malcolm responded to the announcement of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court:

“Over his 30 years on the bench, Justice Anthony Kennedy certainly left his mark on the law. It was not always easy to pigeonhole Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, except that it was seemingly marked by an occasional breathtaking inconsistency. Hailed by some as ‘King Kennedy’ there was no question that, particularly in recent years, he was usually the deciding vote in close and controversial cases. While he sided with the conservative justices in many of these cases involving religious liberty, civil rights, voting rights, campaign finance laws, and the Second Amendment, he cast the deciding vote in several seminal cases restricting capital punishment and advancing socially liberal causes.

“While he had a complicated relationship with conservatives, the Heritage Foundation thanks Justice Kennedy for his many years of dedicated service to our country and for giving President Trump another opportunity to appoint a committed constitutionalist justice to the Supreme Court.”