On Monday you had to get to the Vermont Supreme Court hearing room an hour early to be assured of a seat. By the time it became obvious that Governor Shumlin was running late, the crowd that included House Speaker Shap Smith, former House Majority Leader Floyd Nease, Reps. Tony Klein, Tim Jerman, and Bill Lippert, and State Treasurer Beth Pearce was standing two and three deep along the back wall and down the sides, with an overflow crowd out in the hallway.

But for me, the first highlight came half an hour before that, when about-to-be-sworn-in Supreme Court Justice Beth Robinson entered the room to place a folder and a glass of water on the podium. The crowd stood and erupted into applause. Beth made shooshing, sit-down motions, which were ignored for at least 5 minutes. “No, wait, it hasn’t started yet,” she tried to explain.

Oh, but it had.

The esteem, the respect, the sense of recognition for hard work done with total integrity, the idea of justice achieved for a formerly despised minority – those had all begun, in some cases long before Monday afternoon’s ceremony, in others the moment her nomination was announced on October 18.

There was an amazing amount of laughter (check out Glenn Russell’s photos) for such a solemn occasion, much of it prompted by Susan Murray, Beth’s law partner at Langrock Sperry & Wool and co-activist for marriage equality.

Murray, detailing the qualities that Robinson brings to the Supreme Court, recalled many excursions walking up Mt. Philo together, talking strategy or just taking a break. “Beth would say, ‘Excuse me just  a minute,’ and then run the rest of the way up the mountain and back. And then, if she still had more energy, she’d do it again. There’s not a lazy bone in her body.” She called Beth’s intelligence “breathtaking,” and her mind “agile,” and “a pleasure to watch as it worked” through a case.

She assured the other justices of what the rest of us had already seen that afternoon and years before: “There’s no grandstanding, no arrogance or ego” to Beth. She listens, is patient, a team player, has an uncanny ability to ask just the right question at the right time, Murray went on. “And most importantly, she has the ability to laugh at herself.”

Another highlight was a comment by Denise Johnson, Vermont’s first female Supreme Court Justice, whose retirement opened up the seat on the Court that Beth will occupy: “If you’re here long enough,” she said, “today’s dissent will become tomorrow’s majority.”

There was appreciative laughter among the audience members, most of whom had been here long enough to know that in the ground-breaking Baker v State case that led to civil unions, Johnson dissented from the majority’s “discrimination is unconstitutional, it’s the legislature’s job to fix it” decision in favor of a ruling for full marriage equality.

“Enjoy the company of friends,” family, colleagues, and well-wishers now, Johnson advised Robinson, because it will all go away soon, “as former colleagues begin to treat you with deference and distance.” The task of making rulings fair and standing up under legal and public criticism afterwards, Johnson advised, “makes advocacy and arguing a case before this court look easy.”

When Beth spoke, she thanked everyone, acknowledging Justice Johnson’s role on the court: “You’ve been a model for me, you’ve broken barriers I haven’t even had to think about.”

Perhaps her most moving thanks went to her parents, who had driven from Indiana for the occasion: “If I am half as fair and compassionate as a justice as you have been as parents, Vermont is in good hands.” Beth also reassured her new colleagues: “Despite the puffery of the last few minutes, I know I don’t have a clue,” she said, and promised to listen and learn and depend on their guidance.

“I know I’m not always going to get it right on the law,” she told us, “much as I love the law. I’ve come to love the people whose lives are affected by the law. My pledge is to always remember the people, and not just the abstraction of the law.

And then Beth Robinson was sworn in as the newest justice of the Vermont Supreme Court.