A NEW VARIATION ON THE "strange new respect" award is needed--in fact, is being developed--for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. The worst of Ronald Reagan's appointees to the Court, Kennedy delivered the 5-4 decision on March 1 in Roper v. Simmons, holding that killers who kill before they turn 18 can no longer be executed, because the meaning of the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment has changed in the past 16 years.

"Strange new respect" was a Reagan-era coinage of Tom Bethell's, meant to sum up the unctuous indulgence with which the media receive the ideological surrender of a Washington conservative who has drifted left. (For instance, the website of Progressive magazine last week lauded Kennedy's action in Roper as showing "considerable growth and courage.") But what comes next if you've already earned "strange new respect"? If you're on the Supreme Court, then how about an official opinion from two colleagues flattering you as an Honorary Framer?

Justice Kennedy has been earning "strange new respect" since June 1992, when, in the space of a week, the Court announced opinions that he had authored or coauthored striking down prayers at high school graduations and--bitterest of all for those who had toiled for a Reaganesque Supreme Court--reaffirming Roe v. Wade. Since the release of the late Justice Harry Blackmun's papers, it has been a matter of public record that, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Kennedy abandoned a 5-4 majority that was ready to overrule Roe. Two years ago, in Lawrence v. Texas, he produced his pièce de résistance, striking down sodomy laws and arguably paving the way for the Court to one day strike down state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.

In fairness, Kennedy dissented from the Court's disallowance of laws banning partial-birth abortion: Such laws, he insisted in his June 2000 dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart, are precisely the sort of can't-we-at-least-agree-on-this restriction that Casey allows for--or so he had thought. And on the same day as Stenberg, he dissented from the Court's decision in Hill v. Colorado, which upheld draconian restrictions on pro-life counseling outside abortion clinics. The Court's substantial withdrawal of abortion from the legislative process, he argued, makes one-on-one speech on the issue all the more important--a strong point.

Even so, Kennedy has come a long way from his days as a Sacramento lawyer-lobbyist and ally of the nascent Reagan circle. In recognition of which, and for his decision last week to ban capital punishment for juveniles, he has now been honored with an official concurrence by two of his colleagues, to be published in the United States Reports alongside all other Supreme Court opinions, concurrences, and dissents, suitable for citing as well as framing. What is unusual about this concurrence is that it does nothing but pat Justice Kennedy on the back and assure him that the Framers would be proud of him.

This astonishing one-page concurrence was written by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. First, they hail the Court's ruling on the preposterous grounds that without it, even 7-year-olds could have been executed, such having purportedly been the Common Law rule according to the Court's pre-March 1 jurisprudence.