The Nine [179]
25
PHANATICS?
For many years, the Court had a tradition of holding a welcoming dinner for each new member, with the former junior justice acting as host. The practice fell into disuse in recent years because there had been so little turnover among the justices. Still, during the summer of 2006, Breyer said he wanted to revive the custom and have a dinner for Alito. The permanent staff members of the Court, with their usual reverence for tradition, took to the assignment with gusto—and even staged a full rehearsal dinner, just to make sure that the evening would be flawless.
On Friday, October 6, a small ensemble from the Marine Corps band greeted the justices and their spouses in the Great Hall of the Court. It was on occasions like this one that the Court most felt like a family. Sandra and John O’Connor were there, as were the widows of Thurgood Marshall and Potter Stewart. At last, just before dessert, Breyer rose to give a toast.
“Sam, we are here to welcome you,” Breyer said, “and we are very happy to have this dinner for you. But I have to warn you about something. Everyone here tonight is very nice to you. But they’ll turn on you. They’ll dissent from your opinions. They won’t sign on to your dissents. It’s a tough group.”
In the flickering light of the candelabras, the guests exchanged puzzled looks.
“What you need here is a friend,” Breyer went on. “You need someone who will stand by you—really stand by you, not like these people around the table.”
At that moment, the door to the dining room swung open and a giant beast with green fur, purple eyelashes, and a Philadelphia Phillies jersey burst into the room. The Phillie Phanatic, mascot of Alito’s beloved baseball team, lumbered over to Alito, gave him a prolonged embrace, and then left the room, leaving raucous laughter in its wake.
The welcoming dinner for Alito showed how the comradely spirit of the Rehnquist Court had survived the transition to a new chief. Roberts displayed the same genial manner with his new colleagues that he had before the Judiciary Committee. Courteous, even deferential, Roberts controlled the mechanics of the Court in the same evenhanded way that had made Rehnquist so popular among the justices. In conference, as before, everyone still had the chance to speak once before anyone spoke twice—and they did so at somewhat greater length than Rehnquist had permitted. Roberts also parceled out opinion-writing duties in the same fair-minded way that Rehnquist had, distributing the “dogs” and significant cases in roughly even numbers. In his annual message on the judiciary, the chief justice issued a passionate call to Congress to grant long-delayed pay increases for federal trial and appellate judges—a cause important to both liberal and conservative members of the Court. In speeches, Roberts repeated his pleas for judicial minimalism—narrow decisions endorsed by clear majorities (or, better yet, unanimous agreement) of the justices.
But the good cheer—and the promises of incremental change—masked the truth about the Roberts Court on the only thing that mattered, the substance of its decisions. George W. Bush’s second term has been marked by a series of political calamities for the president and his party—on the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, Social Security and immigration reform, and the midterm elections, to name a few. But one major and enduring project went according to plan: the transformation of the Supreme Court. Quickly, almost instantly by the usual stately pace of the