The first requirement for Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the first day of her confirmation hearings has been to sit alone at a table in a packed Senate hearing room and appear pleasantly impassive. This she has managed nicely, as Republican senators question if she will invent new practices in judicial law or bring "radical change" and Democratic senators lavish praise about her accomplishments and extraordinary career. Her hands have remained flat on the table before her, a pad for notetaking untouched.

Her family and friends were arrayed behind her, nearly 35 photographers sitting cross-legged in a circle before her. Behind the photographers, sit the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a panel comprised mostly of white men in dark suits.

Through the morning hours, Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building primarily has been a chamber of polite recitation of senatorial opening statements. There have been two disruptions: About 45 minutes into the hearing, a man at the back of the room jumped to his feet and shouted about protecting the unborn, and "unborn Latinos." Capitol Hill police quickly pounced. And about 12:35 p.m, another man shouted "Abortion is murder" and the police collared him, too.

There has been one appreciative chuckle. About 90 minutes in, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) put bluntly what will happen after these scheduled four days of hearings: "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you are going to get confirmed." As laughter spread through the room, he quickly added, "And I don't think you're going to have a meltdown."

The proceedings in the morning were so unremarkable that Nina Totenberg, the veteran Supreme Court correspondent for National Public Radio, could be seen working a crossword puzzle. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a man not known for being press-shy, told aides as he bustled out of the room during a short break that "I'm not going to stop" in the ersatz spin room set up outside.
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The atmosphere inside mirrored the atmosphere outside, when Sotomayor rolled up to the Hart Building shortly after 9 this morning. The nation's capital was at its most tidy and earnest.

The first 50 members of the public had already received their tickets to the hearing room, on nice card stock with a dark green border, suitable for keeping. They dispersed for coffee and lined up dutifully again, by 8:55 a.m. The sunlight dappled on the pink begonias, and tall oaks shaded the members of the citizenry who waited at First Avenue and C Street NE for admission.

The usual noisy tug of this republic seemed to have gone on mute.

The pavement in front of the Supreme Court was empty. The few dedicated persons who pray the rosary for the unborn were nowhere to be seen. Even the small band of protesters across the intersection seemed well-behaved. Their "Defeat Sotomayor, Overturn Roe" chant carried on the breeze for a handful of minutes, then stopped.

Ephraim Cruz of New York was first in line, having arrived at 3 a.m. Six hours later, he still looked fresh: black pinstriped suit, gleaming baby blue tie. Cruz, who is affiliated with the health care unit of the Service Employees International Union in New York, did not want to take a chance that he might miss today's historic hearing for the first Latino nominee to the Supreme Court -- or, as a placard-waving Sotomayor supporter on Maryland Avenue had it, "la prima Latina."

"Like President Obama's trajectory, she represents that same trajectory, of working class-background people who have applied themselves," said Cruz. "New York is gushing."

He had the line mostly to himself, as dark turned to dawn. By 7:30 a.m., though, about 100 people stood or sat, the conventional crowd of the curious and the wonkish, a copy of The Economist here, someone reading "The Audacity of Hope" there. Matt Douglas, a third-year law student at the University of Kentucky, got permission to take the day off from his job at the Department of Justice's Office of Tribal Justice.
He carried a biography of Lincoln and had collected three tickets to gain admittance to three 20-minute periods of today's hearing. Sotomayor was not scheduled to give her statement until this afternoon, and he hoped to be present for that.

"If I had been in the office, I would have been watching the whole thing anyway," he said, just as he did for the hearings of Samuel Alito and John Roberts three years ago. "And I'll be back tomorrow, because I want to see the give-and-take."

The black-suited young staffers of the Senate Judiciary Committee were so efficient that by 8 a.m. roughly 200 tickets had been distributed to all who waited.

When Sue McInnish, here from Montgomery, Ala., for a National Council of Nonprofits conference, wandered up at 8:30 a.m., she was confused. Where was the line? Where were all the clamoring citizens?

"Are there no more tickets?" she asked. One immediately was pressed into her hand. "I come back at 10:30?" she asked. "Well, that's just perfect! She looks like a dynamic nominee, and I'm real excited."

Inside the hearing room, the Sotomayor family, including her mother, Celina Sotomayor, stepfather Omar Lopez, brother Juan and other relatives, took their places in the front row by 9:30 a.m. and immediately became the subject of intense interest from photographers.

The media occupied six long tables in the middle of the room, with seating for almost 110 journalists. There are also another two rows of seating for an additional 50 journalists. The cushiest seats in the room were the four rows directly behind the nominee's table, a collection of nearly 50 VIPs selected by the administration as the nominee's advisers, friends and other key people whose faces will be seen frequently on television behind Sotomayor. Among those were Louis Freeh, the former FBI director, and Wade Henderson, head of the influential Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
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That left but two rows of seats for those members of the general public like Cruz, Douglas and McInnish to experience their 20 minutes of history.