“I take this office with gratitude and no bitterness,” new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP photo supreme court Kavanaugh joins court, with few signs of bruising confirmation fight The newly minted Supreme Court justice looked a bit skittish at the outset but soon waded into a lively discussion among the justices.

Newly minted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh took part in his first oral argument session at the high court Tuesday, looking a bit skittish at the outset but soon wading into a lively discussion among the justices about how much force is needed to make a robbery violent under federal law.

And throughout the morning, there were few signs of the tumultuous confirmation process for Kavanaugh, including the sexual assault allegations that led to his confirmation hearings being reopened. The only indication was a heightened security presence at the court, with extra barricades around the court’s front plaza. A smattering of anti-Kavanaugh protesters stood watch at the bike-rack barriers, but the dozen or so people were far fewer than the hordes that blocked the court’s formal entrance soon after the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh on Saturday.


Kavanaugh began his Supreme Court career by filing into the courtroom behind Justice Elena Kagan just after 10 a.m., seeming dour and a bit tense.

Chief Justice John Roberts opened the session by welcoming him with the traditional greeting for new justices. “We wish you a long and happy career in our common calling,” Roberts said.

Kavanaugh nodded and said, “Thank you.”

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But it was a few minutes later that the new justice finally cracked a smile, laughing in response to something Kagan whispered to him.

Kavanaugh seemed to defer to his colleagues, by waiting about 20 minutes into the first round of arguments before asking his first question, about how the law applied to a robbery accompanied by “a mere tap on the shoulder.” By the time the new justice chimed in, all of the other justices had spoken except for Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas almost never asks questions in oral arguments.

Kavanaugh made clear he won’t take that approach, asking about five questions during the first argument and even more during a second set of cases. However, most of his queries were relatively mundane compared to more colorful comments and antics from some of the other justices.

Roberts revealed that he and his law clerks prepared for Tuesday’s arguments by tussling over a dollar bill in his chambers. He said he expected the money to rip and was surprised by how much force was needed to yank it away from him when he was trying to hold onto it.

“If you're really tugging on it. ... I'm not saying nobody could do it, but it requires a lot of force, more than you might think,” Roberts said, drawing more chuckling from Kavanaugh.

With that, Justice Sonia Sotomayor launched into a hypothetical that went beyond the verbal, apparently pinching Justice Neil Gorsuch, who sits to her right in the court’s new configuration.

While Sotomayor was trying to illustrate how little force could accompany a robbery that can lead to mandatory 15-year sentence for a subsequent federal offense under a three-strikes provision, Gorsuch’s almost theatrical reaction of surprise at the unexpected intrusion may have undermined her point.

There was a long line of onlookers seeking to snag a seat for Kavanaugh’s first session (or because they have a unusually keen interest in how the law treats slight-force robberies). The second argument Tuesday was in a pair of cases involving whether burglaries of mobile homes count as strikes under the same federal three-strikes law.

Kagan and Kavanaugh seemed to have a good rapport. Indeed, Kavanaugh mentioned Kagan in at least a couple of questions, picking up on comments she made earlier in the arguments. At one point, he noted a point she’d made about a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that says force has to be “substantial” to qualify as a use of violence.

“As Justice Kagan points out, how are we supposed to deal with that language if we’re trying to follow [the 2010 decision] strictly?” he asked.

Among the guests on hand for Tuesday’s session was Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose seat Kavanaugh took and who conducted the new justice’s ceremonial swearing in at the White House on Monday night. Kennedy sat in a portion of the courtroom typically reserved for former justices and family members of justices.

Last week, Kagan expressed concern that Kennedy’s departure from the court could undercut its legitimacy since the Reagan appointee has served as a swing justice in recent years, sometimes voting with the liberals and sometimes the conservatives.

“It’s been an extremely important thing for the court that in the last 40 years, starting with Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor and continuing with Justice Kennedy, there has been a person who found the center, where people couldn’t predict in that sort of way,” Kagan said . “That’s enabled the court to look so it was not all by one side or another and it was indeed impartial and neutral and fair. And it’s not so clear that I think going forward that sort of middle position — it’s not so clear whether we’ll have it.”

For his part, Kavanaugh said Monday night that while he was “tested” by the confirmation process, it didn’t change the way he plans to approach the job.

“I take this office with gratitude and no bitterness. On the Supreme Court, I will seek to be a force for stability and unity,” Kavanaugh said. “I was not appointed to serve one party or one interest, but to serve one nation.”