Kavanaugh at ease inside as some protest outside
WASHINGTON — A small group of protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday for the debut of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but inside the hushed and stately courtroom it was business as usual.
There was more laughter than stern words during two hours of oral arguments, and Kavanaugh was an active participant in his first sitting with his new colleagues.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. noted Kavanaugh’s arrival with the court’s traditional welcome: “Justice Kavanaugh, we wish you a long and happy career in our common calling,” Roberts said.
From there, the court plunged into three cases that called on them to decipher the Armed Career Criminal Act, passed by Congress in 1984 and designed to get people with a history of violence off the streets by enhancing prison terms.
It provides stiffer penalties for those who are convicted in federal court of possessing firearms if they have previously been found guilty of violent felonies or serious drug offenses. But deciding what constitutes a violent felony is often difficult because state laws do not always match up precisely.
Stokeling v. United States involved a Florida man who said his conviction for snatching a necklace from someone’s neck should not count as a violent felony.
Kavanaugh did not join his colleagues in colorful hypotheticals testing what sorts of offenses would qualify a crime as a violent felony involving the use or threat of physical force.
Wearing the same black robe he wore on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh, 53, seemed at ease, and at the end of arguments, Justice Elena Kagan, seated next to him, offered a handshake.
In the courtroom for Kavanaugh’s first day was his former boss and the justice he replaced on the bench, Anthony Kennedy, as well as the spouses of some of the justices.
Kavanaugh’s family — his parents, Martha and Ed, and his wife, Ashley, and two daughters — also were in attendance.
The serene, orderly setting in the formal courtroom was in stark contrast to Senate hearings last month that led to Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
On Tuesday, the protesters were outside.