Or to be more precise, it began with a respectful hush of nearly five minutes that separated the new chief justice's arrival in the courtroom on Monday morning from the heralded entrance of President Bush, who watched his successful Supreme Court nominee ascend the bench and, for ceremonial purposes, repeat the oath he took at the White House last Thursday.
During that five-minute interlude, Chief Justice Roberts sat alone in a chair in the well of the courtroom, in the section ordinarily reserved for members of the Supreme Court bar. He smiled at his family, seated in the front row, and at members of the capacity crowd, most of whom he knew.
He gazed up at the ornately carved ceiling and the marble frieze that decorates the courtroom, surveying the familiar scene from a new vantage point. His judicial robe was unadorned, lacking the four gold stripes that his mentor and predecessor, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, had added to each sleeve to brighten up the basic black.
It was one month to the day since Chief Justice Rehnquist died. The flags on the court plaza, in fact, were still flying at half staff. But inside the courtroom, it was the beginning of a new era.
Last week, after the Senate voted to confirm Chief Justice Roberts, the court removed the black crepe that had been placed over the center chair to mark Chief Justice Rehnquist's death. Draping the chair of a justice who has died in office is a tradition that the court had not had the occasion to observe for the past 51 years, since the death in 1954 of Justice Robert H. Jackson.
On Monday, Justice John Paul Stevens administered the oath, as he did at the White House last Thursday. Justice Stevens, the senior associate justice, is the only member of the court who was in office when Chief Justice Roberts was a law clerk there during the 1980 term.
Justice Stevens was once a Supreme Court law clerk himself, during the 1947 term. He greeted his new colleague warmly, wishing him "a long and happy career in our common calling."
Later in the morning, speaking from the bench when the court reconvened for the first argument session, Justice Stevens amplified his greeting. He pointed out that Chief Justice Roberts had argued before the Supreme Court 39 times, "a number that exceeds the combined experience of the rest of us." He added, "We know him well, and he has already earned our respect and admiration."
The invitation-only audience at the investiture included friends and former colleagues of the new chief justice, including many prominent members of the Supreme Court bar. Some had been mentioned as possible candidates for this vacancy or for the seat that will soon be vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a position to which President Bush had barely an hour earlier named his White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers. Others in the audience would have been plausible Supreme Court nominees of a Democratic president.
But the might-have-beens were left unspoken during the brief ceremony, which Mr. Bush watched silently. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, in the formal attire worn by government lawyers who appear before the Supreme Court, presented Chief Justice Roberts's formal commission, which the court's chief clerk, William K. Suter, then unfurled and read aloud.
After the ceremony, Justice Stevens escorted Chief Justice Roberts down the court's front steps to pose for photographers arrayed on the plaza outside. For an institution that shuns television cameras, this is one rare accommodation, a scene repeated each time a new justice arrives.
Twenty-four years ago, it was Justice O'Connor who walked down the steps, blonde and youthful-looking in a short skirt. The scene produced an iconic photograph that underscored the departure from tradition that the arrival of a woman on the Supreme Court signified.
This time, it was a generational tableau that was on display. Justice Stevens, still spry and a regular tennis player at 85, stumbled slightly while navigating the stairs and was steadied by the 50-year-old chief justice. After a few moments in front of the cameras, Justice Stevens stepped aside. Chief Justice Roberts's young son, Jack, was released from his mother's restraining hand and darted across the plaza into the arms of his father, who hugged him and hoisted him into the air.