Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh stressed the importance of the separation of powers in government during a rare appearance at a Texas community college Thursday, despite mounting criticism against the court for decisions favoring President Trump’s administration.

“The framers recognized, in a way that I think is brilliant, that preserving liberty requires separating the power,” Kavanaugh said, according to an Associated Press report from the event. “No one person or group of people should have too much power in our system.”

Video cameras were not allowed to record the speech, which was held at McLennan Community College in Waco.

Lower-level federal court judges have recently spoken out against what they have described as a pattern of emergency rulings from the conservative-leaning high court in response to lower court decisions on contentious cases involving the current White House. Three of the Supreme Court justices, including Kavanaugh, were picked by Trump during his first term.

The event was in honor of Kavanaugh’s former boss, Ken Starr, who died in 2022 but is still celebrated by conservatives for his investigations into then-President Clinton.