Stephen Colbert gets Justice Stephen Breyer to lighten up. Breyer gets Colbert to act serious.

"You're really classing up the joint," Stephen Colbert told Justice Stephen Breyer on Monday's Late Show. Colbert used the rare occasion of a U.S. Supreme Court justice coming on late-night TV to ask if everyone should get a lifetime appointment at their job (If they can, Breyer laughed. "My father's favorite advice to me: Stay on the payroll!"), if the Supreme Court has a spanking machine to initiate new justices (No, but there is a sort of hazing process, as Breyer should know, having been the most junior justice for 11 long years), and a few other silly questions.

Breyer laughed some as he gave us a peek behind the curtain of the country's most exclusive judicial club. But he also prompted Colbert to ask some tougher questions, like about the prohibition of cameras at oral arguments — "Why can't we watch you if the Supreme Court repeatedly rules that we can be watched by the government?" — and how the Supreme Court justices can disagree vehemently and still "manage to keep doing your job and the rest of the government can't?" Breyer answered the questions thoughtfully, noting for example that contrary to what you might think (ahem, Scalia), when the nine justices are discussing cases alone, in 21 years he has never heard any of his colleagues raise their voice in anger or say anything insulting about another justice, not even as a joke. Watch the whole exchange below. Peter Weber

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