Daily Inspiration Quote by Anthony Kennedy

Kennedy is calling out a seductive form of power: the power to do nothing. In a political culture that punishes risk and rewards plausible deniability, restraint can look like wisdom. He’s warning that judges, too, can launder avoidance into “prestige” by declining to decide hard questions, letting controversy drift back to elected branches, and preserving the court’s image as above the fray. The line is barbed because it flips the usual reverence for judicial minimalism; sometimes “humility” is just cowardice wearing a robe.

The phrasing matters. “Easy” suggests not just temptation but laziness, the institutional equivalent of taking the safe lane. “Enhance your prestige” implies a reputational market where elites trade in signals of seriousness, and where refusing responsibility can masquerade as prudence. Kennedy is also defending an older ideal of the Supreme Court as an institution that earns legitimacy by doing the unpleasant work: resolving conflicts, clarifying rights, and taking ownership of consequences rather than outsourcing them to politics.

Contextually, Kennedy spent his career at the hinge point of the court, often the decisive vote in culture-war cases. That position invites a particular kind of criticism: that a justice can protect the court’s stature by splitting the difference, narrowing rulings, or ducking issues until public opinion settles. His statement pushes back. The subtext is a justification for engagement: if the court is going to wield enormous authority, it can’t perform neutrality through silence. Tradition, for Kennedy, is not passivity; it’s the willingness to be accountable when law and public life collide.