The investiture ceremony saw over 500 guests in attendance, including legal luminaries, senior Obama administration officials and family and friends of the Srinivasans like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s wife Gursharan Kaur and her daughters Amrit Singh, a human rights lawyer, and Upinder Singh, a professor and author -- so much so that an overflow room had to be opened.

It was a testament to the great respect, admiration and popularity of Srinivasan, who is already being talked of as a potential Supreme Court nominee the next time a vacancy arises in America’s highest court.