Justice Neil Gorsuch welcomed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court with a touch of humor and some sprinting presidents.
As is tradition, the most junior justice is tasked with organizing the welcome dinner for newly sworn-in justices. After having been appointed by President Trump in 2017, that task fell on Gorsuch after Kavanaugh, 54, assumed office last October.
Gorsuch, 52, told the Wall Street Journal that he hatched an idea for the entertainment from Washington Nationals baseball games. During the games, people wearing over-sized foam heads of various presidents race each other around the field. Gorsuch hired Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to do the same, but this time in the nation’s highest court.
“I hired two of them,” he explained, “and they had a race in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
“Washington won, and the chief justice had the checkered flag. And I confess, I didn’t tell anybody because I thought it might be better to ask for forgiveness than permission on this one, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go,” he explained.
Gorsuch said the antics went over well with the other more tenured members of the Supreme Court.
“It was a huge hit, because we of course have a lot of baseball fans on the court,” he said.
