Check it Out: Doughtery on Kennedy's Role in Preserving Political Order

Check out Michael Brendan Doughtery's piece in National Review on Justice Kennedy's pivotal role in "preventing the United States from political breakdown."

The Supreme Court's role in this scene, with Kennedy as the swing justice, has been to moderate and restrain the ambitions of each party. Kennedy deals out victories and defeats to each side--giving slightly more defeats to social conservatives. In effect, he constrains what each side can do to the other. His mercurial jurisprudence replicates and even gives the savor of legitimacy to a closely divided country.