We write not to praise Anthony Kennedy’s jurisprudence, but to bury it.

Across 31 years, Justice Kennedy issued many rulings, good and bad. But his most lasting legacy was the travesty he released 26 years ago today, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. With airy, mystical reasoning, unrooted in the Constitution, the common law, or the natural law, he talked himself into saving a precedent that was indefensible legally, scientifically, and morally.