He's been a solidly conservative, GOP partisan 95% of the time. The 5% was a good 5%, but John Wayne Gacy was a noted fundraiser for charity, too -- it doesn't excuse the bad 95%. From 538:
...The New York Times characterized him as an “equal-opportunity disappointer” for both liberals and conservatives.
Except that’s not really the case. His sweeping rhetoric on gay rights, combined with a handful of key votes with the liberals in controversial cases, overshadows his track record of conservative rulings on a wide range of other questions.
An analysis of Kennedy’s voting record during his three decades on the court shows that he voted with the court’s right wing in the majority of cases — including controversial, closely decided cases — throughout his career. And although he was likelier to side with the liberals once he became the court’s swing vote, legal experts say that he occupied the ideological middle ground on relatively few issues. “When you have an odd number of justices, someone is always going to be in the middle, and Kennedy was certainly in the middle a lot,” said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. But on many topics, Kennedy was as far to the right as his conservative colleagues. “The reality is that in a lot of cases, we may not see much of a difference between Kennedy and his successor.”
= new reply since forum marked as read
