WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan says her colleague Antonin Scalia deserves a lot of credit for getting the high court to divine what laws mean by focusing on the words Congress used.

Kagan says the art of interpreting statutes has changed for the better in the past 30 years, largely because of Scalia.

The liberal Kagan says the conservative Scalia will go down in history for his insistence that justices look more to the words of a law than they used to.

Kagan spoke Thursday night at a downtown Washington synagogue.

Scalia has come under criticism for comments he made this week at Kagan's alma mater, Princeton University, in which he compared laws against homosexuality to those dealing with murder and bestiality.

Kagan says she loves all her colleagues.