That's how Justice Souter described his early experience as a Supreme Court justice. Here's more from Adam Nagourney on the road ahead for soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor:
“I was frightened to death for the first three years,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who joined the court in 1994, said in a 2006 interview. . . .
In addition to the blockbuster election-law case, the new term is frontloaded with important First Amendment, business, criminal and patent cases. Justice Sotomayor’s early votes and opinions, along with alliances she forges, will provide answers to at least some of the questions she avoided in confirmation hearings.
But Supreme Court specialists said they do not expect her to take a fundamentally different approach from Justice Souter, whom she is succeeding, in most kinds of cases. They also cautioned that a justice’s first few years are often a poor indicator of a long-term philosophy.
“Few justices write broadly or stake out new terrain in their first terms,” said Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University who served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall. . .
“I say categorically that no prior experience, including prior judicial experience, prepares one for the work of the Supreme Court,” Justice Brennan wrote in 1973. “The initial confrontation on the United States Supreme Court with the astounding differences in function and character of role, and the necessity for learning entirely new criteria for decisions, can be a traumatic experience for the neophyte.”
The LA Times takes a look at some biographical factors that distinguish Sotomayor from her new colleagues, including the fact that English is her second language, her diabetes, her relative lack of wealth, and her status as a divorced woman with no children. It also notes that "for the first time at the court, cameras will be allowed to record the moment a new Supreme Court justice takes the oath of office" on Saturday.
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