Stephen Colbert's opening question to Justice Breyer: "What's it like to be a Supreme Court Justice? Is it a good job?"

Breyer's answer is that it's a great benefit — especially as you get older — to have a job that requires you to do your best "every single minute." That gets a huge cheer from the audience. (I know there's an "applause" sign, but still...)

Question 2 is great: "Lifetime appointment! Would you recommend that for everyone?" Breyer laughs and just quotes his father as having advised: "Stay on the payroll."

Question 3 is whether he ever asks himself, "Why me? Why do I get to be one of the 9 people to make the call here?" The answer is "of course," and in the first few years, you may look confident, but it takes "a period of time" to feel confident. Justice Souter told him that, and Justice Douglas told Justice Souter that. (Note: Souter and Douglas did not overlap on the Supreme Court.)

Breyer has a book to flog. "The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities." Colbert whips that out, but the next question isn't about that topic. It's: How come no cameras in the Supreme Court room? If there were cameras in the courtroom, Colbert says, you could just put the book on the edge of "your desk"— he demonstrates with the book — "And you wouldn't have to be here right now, shaking your lawmaker." From the next room Meade says that he's not a "lawmaker," and I'm trying to get this post written, so I resist veering into a real-life conversation about how some people think the Court is making law and not, as propriety supposedly demands, merely finding the law.

Breyer gets very somber and says: "I'm in a job where we wear black robes in part because we're speaking for the law." And Colbert says: "And in part to make you spooky." I found that very funny. It was an interruption of Breyer's thought, which continued with the statement that everyone knows the judges are individual human beings, but they want to look like they embody the law and not their own personal preferences.

I can think of a few wisecracks that could be interposed there, but Colbert lets him run out his thought: Cameras would change that in ways that can't be predicted. It's better for judges to affect people through the written opinions, he says. Once people are seeing the lawyers and judges, their minds work in a different way, a way that's less related to what law is and more emotional.

Next, Colbert asks a question that gets a big cheer from the audience: How come the Supreme Court Justices, unlike the rest of the federal government, get along and sit around together amiably, even though they disagree on the issues? Not answering the question, Breyer says he's never heard a voice raised in anger or a personal insult — "not even as a joke." Breyer gets so adamant that Colbert says: "You're yelling at me right now." Breyer considers speaking but decides just to laugh, and Colbert seizes the opportunity by extending his hand for the final thanks-for-the-interview handshake.

A nice little interview. Great questions and reactions from Colbert. Standard Justice Breyer presentation that I'm familiar with that, I suspect, will be pleasing and encouraging for the Colbert audience. No pesky explanation of the subject of the book — arguing that American courts should take the law of foreign countries into account.