Anthony Kennedy Interview (page: 5 / 5) Supreme Court of the United States	Print Interview

You have a reputation as someone who can build bridges, who can build majorities, who can achieve compromise. How important is compromise in this system of ours?

Anthony Kennedy: It's essential.

Sometimes people think compromise means squishy, centrist. It doesn't. The whole idea of a democratic society is that there must be a consensus, and it's a consensus that should be based on rational dialogue. I'm not sure that mass politics with modern communications has yet found a way to have a quiet, rational dialogue. I'm not quite sure we've found the key to that. But, we not only have to do that in our own society, we must not become a hostile, factious, divisive society. We must be a society that has a broad consensus on certain very fundamental values, and we must do that because after we build bridges of understanding with ourselves, we have to build bridges of understanding with the rest of the world. I was talking to some students around the turn of the century. I guess it would be 1999, I think, and some student raised his hand and said, "What are the great issues of the next millennium?" Or the next 100 years. It was something I should have had an answer for, after dinner table conversation or something, in reflection, but I didn't. It caught me by surprise. So, I came up with an answer. I said, "We have the great challenge and the first duty to build bridges of understanding with the world of Islam." And I got more letters from that comment -- it was on C-Span -- than anything I've ever said. Thousands of letters saying, "Why?" People saying -- and it struck me that there's a void there. We're in a struggle in which our security will depend on ideas. The idea of freedom, if accepted by most of the rest of the world, is our best security. And, we must build bridges of understanding to explain the principles of freedom. And, I'm not sure that we're doing a very good job at the moment.
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Are some decisions harder to make than others? What are the most difficult decisions to make?

Anthony Kennedy: I'll tell you first the easiest.

The easiest are the technical ones, the things I was trained to do in law school: how to read a statute, how to apply the rules of evidence. I have a lot of help in the history of the law for that. The most difficult ones are defining the components of human liberty because if you insist that the individual has a particular right, that means the legislature cannot infringe on that right. And, sometimes your own values and your own morals really would disapprove of the conduct that you're ratifying, but you do so because there's an area of morality. But, morality really should have an underpinning of rational choice, and each citizen must make a rational choice to determine what is good and what is evil, and those are hard.
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Do you ever second-guess yourself?

Anthony Kennedy: Not often. You can't be effective if you're always worrying about the last decision. You sometimes wonder how your decisions will play out, but I think the major decisions that I've made are correct over the course of time. We must give reasons for what we do. That's another part of judicial tradition. We will be judged by those reasons.

What do you think are the most important qualities for achievement in your field?

Anthony Kennedy: I think that maybe the qualities for achievement in my field are not different -- much different -- than any others. Number one: Knowing yourself, and being honest about your own failings and your own weakness. Number two: To have an understanding that you have the opportunity to shape the destiny of this country. The framers wanted you to shape the destiny of the country. They didn't want to frame it for you. And you, I think, have to remind yourself that you can achieve something now, but that it's going to be measured in the long term. And I worry about a society in which five percent of the people use 45 percent of the nation's resources. I think that's selfish, not only for the rest of the world, but for our own grandchildren.
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I think you are happiest if you find a profession or a business or an occupation where you manipulate symbols that have an intrinsic ethical content. Tom Wolfe wrote a book called Bonfire of the Vanities. It's a parody or a portrayal of New York. No one comes out well in this book. The lawyers never come out very well, newspaper people don't come out very well, clergy doesn't come out well. He has a hero or protagonist, Sherman McCoy, and he's some sort of a businessman. He goes to the beach with his daughter when she's nine or ten. He takes the day off and takes her to the beach for her birthday, and she looks up and she says, "Daddy, what do you do?" He realizes, and the reader realizes, that what he does doesn't make any difference. He manipulates symbols with no ethical content. If you're going to achieve, you have to achieve by manipulating symbols and working with systems that have an ethical content.

Is there anything you would like a second chance at, that you would like to do over again?

Anthony Kennedy: I would like to begin teaching more students. I've taught many, many students, I wish that I could have taught more. I wish that I could find a way to reach more young people. The way I do it now is somewhat hit and miss. I teach classes and I go to universities. I wish there were some more formal way for me to write or speak and to try to interest more people in what I think is the true dynamic of the law and the true dynamic of freedom.

Looking ahead, what concerns you most? What are your major concerns as we head into the 21st century, for this country, for the world?

Anthony Kennedy: My major concern is that what I thought was the golden age of peace seems farther from our reach than I would have thought ten years ago. My major concerns are that there is not an understanding and a commitment to the idea that the American constitutional system and the American idea of freedom have certain universal components that we have the duty, number one, to understand ourselves, and number two, to explain to the rest of the world. Not at the point of a bayonet. That's sometimes necessary, but not at the point of a bayonet, but because we have a bond with all of humankind. I don't think that we are looking far ahead enough in this respect, and I am concerned that nationalism or self-interest will obscure the greatness of American traditions.

What about the contentiousness of American life today, including the judiciary and politics?

Anthony Kennedy: I think we have to do a better job of being less divisive, less narrow. Part of this is because our focus is too short term. If we had a long term objective and a consensus of long term mission, it would be less factious.

What books would you read to your grandchildren? What are the important books to you?

Anthony Kennedy: The minute I give you this list, I'll walk out the door and I'll say, "Why didn't I mention this book?"

I think fiction is very important because it gets us into the mind of a person. Hamlet is a tremendous piece of literature. You know Hamlet better than you know most real people. Do you know the reason? Because you know what he's thinking. And this teaches you that every human has an integrity and an autonomy and a spirituality of his own, of her own, and great literature can teach you that. Billy Budd, Antigone, are very important works. Antigone is brilliant. You know, in literature, the woman is a symbol of mercy and of equity: Antigone, Portia -- Rosa Parks, to use a real person. That's why Justice is a woman, even though she has a sword sometimes. I don't know if that fits, but so: Antigone, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Billy Budd, Nineteen Eighty-Four. You and I grew up with a great fear of the Soviet military might. Nineteen Eighty-Four has one of the most brilliant scenes in literature. The protagonist is being tortured by his communist or totalitarian interrogators, and they want him to say that "Two and two is five." And finally he can't stand the torture anymore, he says, "Okay, two and two is five." But, the torture continues. He said, "Why are you continuing?" They say, "The torture continues not until you just say it, but until you believe it." And, this is a powerful reminder that governments want to plan your destiny. They want to plan what you think, and this must never happen. And so, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book of tremendous importance, I think, in that regard.
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Movies, I think young people misjudge. If you ask high school students what are good books, they usually come up with fair answers, the books they get in college prep courses. So they usually recite some of those types. Scarlet Letter? Excellent! Walden Pond? Terrible, I think. My own choice, I don't like it. But movies? They have no concept that great movies have an ethical development; a spiritual awareness happens to the character. They think movies are just entertainment. And so -- Old? Forget it! Subtitles? Forget it! Black and white? Forget it! They think of movies as having special effects for momentary entertainment, and that's very sad. I'm afraid the producers think of it that way, too, and that's very sad, because movies are a wonderful way to teach about human struggle, human conflict, human reconciliation, human atonement.

How would you like to be remembered? What do you want your legacy to be?

Anthony Kennedy: Somebody who's decent, and honest, and fair, and who's absolutely committed to the proposition that freedom is America's gift to the rest of the world.

We can't thank you enough. It's been a privilege.

Well, thank you.

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