Cases, cafeteria duty await Gorsuch:

America

Ginsburg

How do you keep a new Supreme Court justice’s head from getting too big?

Start by making him take notes and answer the door at the justices’ private meetings. Then, remind him he speaks last at those discussions. Finally, assign him the job of listening to gripes about the food at the court’s cafeteria.

That’s what awaits Neil Gorsuch, who joined the Supreme Court on Monday as the “junior justice,” the freshman of the nine-member court. The menial duties for the newest justice are a part of tradition, but not a bad deal for a job that comes with lifetime tenure and the prestige of a high court seat. Still, it can take all the justices a while to adjust. Justice Samuel Alito says that when he took over as the court’s rookie from Justice Stephen Breyer in 2006, after Breyer had been the court’s junior member for more than a decade, Breyer still leapt up the first time someone interrupted the justices’ private conference with a knock.

“Before I could even start to get out of the chair, Justice Breyer was out of his chair and headed for the door and the chief justice had to say, ‘Steve, sit down, that’s not your job anymore,’” Alito said in a 2009 interview.

Gorsuch will take over junior justice duties from Justice Elena Kagan, who has held the spot since 2010. Kagan has said of her door-opening duties: “Literally, if there is a knock on the door and I don’t hear it there will not be a single other person who will move. They’ll just all stare at me until I figure out: ‘Oh, I guess somebody knocked on the door.” (AP)