Retired US supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy fears “democracy is not guaranteed to survive” as “partisanship is becoming much more prevalent and more bitter” in the legal opinions coming from his former institution, he tells NPR in an upcoming interview.
Strikingly, for the interview set to publish in October, NPR’s Nina Totenberg said she asked Kennedy whether he was still sure the supreme court’s major decisions would remain intact – as he told a small group of journalists that he was when he retired in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first presidency.
NPR reported that Kennedy “demurred”, seven years after that prediction – and three years after the federal abortion rights once granted by the Roe v Wade ruling were eliminated by a supreme court with a conservative supermajority anchored by three Trump appointments.
“We live in an era where reasoned, thoughtful, rational, respectful discourse has been replaced by antagonistic, confrontational conversation,” Kennedy, who was appointed to the supreme court during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, remarked.
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