Now sworn in, Sotomayor returns to rookie status

WASHINGTON -- For weeks, as she prepared for Senate vetting and then faced questions during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Sonia Sotomayor had a battery of administration lawyers ready to guide her through the process.

Now that she has been sworn in, she is leaving behind those aides and beginning a more solitary journey in a separate branch of government, one known for its mystifying tradition, ritual and hierarchy.

"Now, not only don't they help you, they can't help you," says Washington lawyer Jay Jorgensen, a former Supreme Court law clerk and friend of Justice Samuel Alito, who until now was the newest justice. "It's very daunting. In an instant, you're on your own."

Even old judicial hands say it takes time to figure out the place dubbed the "marble palace" and reputed to run as nine little law firms — one for each justice.

Sotomayor's predecessor, newly retired David Souter, has said it was a few years before he felt at ease with the institution's rhythms. Souter had been a state judge for a dozen years but spent only a couple months on a U.S. appeals court before his 1990 appointment. Sotomayor has more experience — six years as a U.S. trial judge and 11 as an appellate judge based in New York.

Yet, any new ninth justice faces challenges in the place that Justice Anthony Kennedy has described as having its own "language and ethic and etiquette."

Take even getting around. The columned building across from the Capitol has four internal courtyards. Some new justices, including Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981, got lost amid the white marble in early days.

Then, there's the emphasis on seniority. In their private meetings on cases, known as "the conference," the justices speak and vote in order of tenure. The most junior justice serves as doorkeeper and secretary, taking notes on the resolution of pending appeals and other business to turn over to the clerk of the court, who keeps the record.

More than at any other federal court, the justices cling to tradition. There are still real elevator operators. When justices send notes to one another or circulate drafts of their rulings for comment, they do so through messengers who carry envelopes from chambers to chambers.

"The traditions heighten the sense of authority and finality that this particular court has," says Christopher Eisgruber, a former clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens and now provost at Princeton University and author of The Next Justice, a book about the appointment process.

Sotomayor's first order of business will be to prepare for a dispute over federal campaign finance law, to be heard Sept. 9, and be ready later that month to consider hundreds of appeals filed over the summer.

But first, she'll have to get an office.

Some of the justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have been in temporary chambers while the building is under renovation and are now playing the high court's version of musical chairs. Ginsburg will be settling into Souter's old chambers.

Justice Stevens, meanwhile, took over retired Justice O'Connor's old chambers, and Justice Antonin Scalia settled into Stevens' old place.

Sotomayor might end up with a temporary office for her first term.

At the court's curved mahogany bench, she will sit at the spectators' far right. A new high-back black leather chair will be made for her. In the justices' private meetings, held in a room off the chambers of Chief Justice John Roberts, Sotomayor will sit closest to the door and must answer it when someone knocks.

In a 2005 appearance at the National Archives, Justice Stephen Breyer recounted his then-decade-long role as a junior justice. Once, when an aide knocked at the door with coffee for Scalia, Breyer carried the beverage to his more senior colleague and quipped, "I've been doing this for 10 years. I've gotten pretty good at it, haven't I?"

According to Breyer, Scalia shot back, "No, you haven't."

Sotomayor may be readier than most new justices for the rituals and hierarchy of the top court, says Helgi Walker, a Washington lawyer who was a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.

"She was already part of a pretty rarefied legal circle before she became a Supreme Court justice," Walker said. "She's been around other federal appeals court judges and the way they think and talk for over a decade."