WASHINGTON—Crowding around a small glass incubator in their personal chambers for a better vantage point, all nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court reportedly gathered Tuesday to watch a brood of baby justices hatch from their eggs.
The Supreme Court, which has closely monitored the development of the judicial embryos for several months, rescheduled arguments in a workplace discrimination case on the docket in order to observe the fledgling justices penetrate the hard outer membranes of the eggs with their tiny gavels, emerging from the shells and screaming unanimous opinions about the sanctity of the Fifth Amendment.
“Aw, how cute, they’re so little that they can’t even hold their heads up or interpret the original intent of the Constitution yet,” Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy said of the trembling, gasping baby legal scholars whose feeble bodies were still slick with yolk and coated with shell fragments after the hatching process. “They look so harmless now. They don’t know any precedents yet. It takes time, but several decades down the line they’ll be unbelievably powerful.”
“Even though the baby justices are still struggling to move, we have to separate them or they’ll violently peck at each other,” Kennedy added. “They’re just so adorable, though. I really want to hold that little constructionist one.”
“They’re just so adorable, though. I really want to hold that little constructionist one.”
According to the court clerks, the newly hatched jurists, who must remain under a heat lamp at all times for warmth, will not be able to open their eyes for at least three days or hear oral arguments until the remaining deutoplasm drains from their rudimentary ear canals.
Sources confirmed that the wet and mewing baby justices currently lack the strength to dissent from denial of certiorari; however, members of the Supreme Court were reportedly thrilled to witness the diminutive judicial experts attempt to thrust their heads forward and chirp their first decision on the regulatory scope of the Commerce Clause.
Several reports also indicated that the Supreme Court bailiff forcibly removed Justice Scalia from the scene to prevent the conservative textualist from eating the smaller, weaker baby justices who he noticed were expressing personal views on public policy.
“The hatchlings have already imprinted on Justice Ginsburg, whom they saw first,” said Chief Justice John Roberts, examining the incubator filled with exhausted baby jurists curled up and sleeping on a bed of case files and related legal materials. “Ruth has been following them closely these last few weeks. She was the first person to notice their muffled peeps of judicial interpretation while they were still inside their eggs.”
“Ruth helped them put on their little robes to stop their shivering after they emerged, and they seem to be acquiring a number of her behavioral characteristics,” Roberts added. “The baby justices are already acting as staunch defenders of privacy rights.”
At press time, half of the baby justices had died from dehydration after Justice Alito forgot to fill their water dish.
