Bitterly divided Americans have reached “a low point in our civic dialogue,” retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said in a talk at Stanford University, his alma mater.

“It’s our duty to use freedom of speech in a responsible way,” in a “kind” way, and “we’re not doing it,” Kennedy said Friday in a question-and-answer session with M. Elizabeth Magill, the Stanford Law School dean. He spoke to students and alumni attending a reunion at the university, from which he graduated in 1958 with a degree in political science.

…

“It’s our duty to use freedom of speech in a responsible way,” in a “kind” way, and “we’re not doing it,” Kennedy said Friday in a question-and-answer session with M. Elizabeth Magill, the Stanford Law School dean. He spoke to students and alumni attending a reunion at the university, from which he graduated in 1958 with a degree in political science.

…

“When we’ve hit a low point in our civic dialogue, which I think we have … (it) should give energy to come upward,” the 80-year-old jurist told Magill. He also said, without elaborating, that senators were entitled to make political decisions about court nominees, “but they should remember that politics has an ethical underpinning.”