Robert Barnes, you covered the Supreme Court for the Washington Post.

Brett Kavanaugh's first day on the court is tomorrow.

What's the first thing he's going to get to decide?

Is it going to be something big, abortion, gun control, the environment?

What does he get?

I'm afraid not.

It is not going to be a big introduction to the term.

There are some criminal cases, some sort of small, bore cases.

You know, in a way, this is a good docket for a new justice and a court that probably

wants to take down the temperature a little bit after some recent terms in which there

were some very big social issues that came before the court.

As it stands right now, the court has a bit of a quiet docket, one that's sort of built

more for lawyers than for the general public.

Well, let's hear about some of those cases.

What do we got?

Well, you know, one thing that'll be interesting is we'll hear about the death penalty.

This is something that Brett Kavanaugh's never really had to face as a judge before because

the court he was on just doesn't really hear those kind of cases.

There's a case about an inmate in Alabama who now has severe dementia.

Now Vernon Madison has been on death row in Alabama for more than three decades.

In 1985, he shot and killed Mobile Police Officer Julius Schulty in cold blood.

He's been so long since his crime.

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