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Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was for years the most powerful member of the Supreme Court. His place at the court’s ideological center made his vote so crucial that lawyers sometimes seemed to direct their arguments almost solely to him. His fellow justices grew more attentive whenever he asked a question.
He has made few public statements since his retirement in 2018, which set the stage for the court’s decisive shift to the right. But in a two-hour conversation last week in his Supreme Court chambers overlooking the Capitol, he denounced what he said was a spike in ignorance, partisanship and vulgarity in the nation’s public life.
The justice also discussed why he thinks his majority opinion establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage a decade ago should endure, a question the court may soon face. He talked about his bitter falling out with Justice Antonin Scalia and their reconciliation shortly before his colleague’s death in 2016. He criticized originalism, the dominant mode of constitutional interpretation among conservatives. And he reflected on his relationship with President Trump, whose rise appears to have played a role in the justice’s critique of declining civility in public discourse.
The occasion for the interview was a memoir to be published next week, “Life, Law and Liberty.” Part autobiography and part overview of the key decisions in his 30 years on the Supreme Court, the book is studded with candid reflections and sharp observations.
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Some of them seemed aimed at Mr. Trump.
“The Constitution does not work if any one branch of the government insists on the exercise of its powers to the extreme,” he wrote. Asked in the interview whether that principle was being tested these days, he said, “I think it’s rather clear that it is.”
