Not a one. Not a smidgen. Nada. Zero.

You know you have made it as an equal member of the Supreme Court when you’re comfortable enough to tease the lawyers during oral arguments.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh did that on just his second day on the bench.

"So you just changed the answer," he told a lawyer who had abruptly switched his argument in a case on maritime law. When the lawyer admitted it, Kavanaugh wryly noted, "Okay, just making sure."

The exchange brought courtroom laughter, and broad smiles from his bench-mates, the kind of thing that passes for humor at the often-stuffy court.

Despite the explosive political fight surrounding his confirmation, the 114th justice has been fitting nicely inside these marbled hallways, where most of the court's work is done in private. Sources say Kavanaugh has been warmly embraced, after the most contentious judicial confirmation in the Senate's history – one rocked by sexual assault allegations which Kavanaugh’s critics called disqualifying yet his allies described as unsubstantiated and part of a “wholesale character assassination.”

— Roman Martinez, former Kavanaugh clerk
"It's been a long couple of months, and an obviously very contentious process, but the nice thing I've seen is him transitioning back into the role that he's most comfortable, which is as a judge, as a justice," said Roman Martinez, a former Kavanaugh law clerk who remains a close friend and confidant. "It means doing the hard work getting into the cases, reading the briefs."

Being welcomed into the exclusive club of nine -- no questions asked -- is a genuine show of comity, but it has practical roots. Getting along personally with each other promotes long-term stability, and can ease the sting of sharp ideological differences on hot-button issues.

"To me, the obvious culprit is Congress, the polarization that exists with votes along party lines, where there is no effort to reach across the aisle," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in remarks last week. "What a difference that time was from what we are witnessing today," she noted about her 96-3 Senate vote in 1993.

The first thing newly minted Justice Kavanaugh did with his eight colleagues as a group was shake their hands.
Kavanaugh promised to work together with them, without partisanship or rancor.

"I’m honored to serve alongside all of my new colleagues, each of whom I know, and each of whom I greatly admire and deeply respect," he said. "The Supreme Court is a team of nine, and I will always be a team player on the team of nine."

Sources say the newest member has been touched by his reception from fellow justices, especially Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both Obama appointees. Each had previously hired a pair of Kavanaugh law clerks from his time on the D.C. federal appeals court.

Days after Kavanaugh's debut, Chief Justice John Roberts made reference to him in a Minnesota speech -- calling the shaking of hands "a repeated reminder that, as our newest colleague put it, we do not sit on opposite sides an aisle, we do not caucus in separate rooms, we do not serve one party or one interest, we serve one nation."

This comes as Kavanaugh's equals obliquely acknowledge the controversy around his nomination and their efforts to put all that behind them, for the good of the institution.

"This is a really divided time," Kagan noted, just one day before the Oct. 6 Senate vote. "Part of the court’s strength and part of the court’s legitimacy depends on people not seeing the court the same way they see the rest of the governing structures in the country. It’s an incredibly important thing for the court to guard."

"We have to rise above partisanship in our personal relationships," Sotomayor said at the same event.

One bit of contention has followed Kavanaugh onto the bench. Roberts acknowledged receiving unspecified ethics complaints about him from the confirmation and has asked a federal appeals court in Denver to investigate the claims, through an internal review process.

And more connections: Kagan hired Kavanaugh to teach part-time at Harvard Law School when she was dean. They now sit next to each other on the right side of the bench and have been seen chatting and smiling amicably during the public sessions.

"I think she was making a very public show that he was one of them,” Martinez said. “And right after the arguments ended, that first day, she gave him a big handshake. That was a nice moment."

Kavanaugh has also reconnected with six of his former law clerks from the federal appeals court down the street where he worked, who are currently serving with other justices.

Everything is just fine