The rigorous romantic: Anthony Lewis on the Supreme Court beat.

AuthorGreenhouse, Linda
PositionThe Art, Craft, and Future of Legal Journalism: A Tribute to Anthony Lewis

Tony Lewis called himself "a romantic about the Supreme Court." (1) If he had not been a romantic when he took up the beat for the New York Times in 1957, he surely would have become one as, for the next seven years, he chronicled the Warren Court's progressive constitutional revolution at the peak of its energy and transformative power. To list just some of the landmark opinions the Court issued during those seven years is to prove the point: Cooper v. Aaron, (2) Mapp v. Ohio, (3), Baker v. Carr, (4) Engel v. Vitale, (5) Gideon v. Wainwright, (6) Brady v. Maryland, (7) School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp, (8) New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, (9) Reynolds v. Sims, (10) Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United Slates. (11) "Historic Change in the Supreme Court" was the headline on a New York Times Magazine article of Tony's that ran in the midst of it all, in June 1962, an article to which I shall return, because it reveals as much about its author as it did about its subject. (12)

You may have done a double-take when I said that Tony covered the Court for seven years--only seven years. As one who came to the beat fourteen years after he left it, and who stayed for nearly three decades, I also find that hard to believe, to the extent that I feel the need to keep checking my notes for accuracy every time I mention it. The reason his seven-year tenure sounds so unbelievably short is that its impact was so unbelievably great. He explained what was happening at the Court in muscular and declarative prose that any intelligent reader could understand. But he did so much more than that. He placed the decisions in the context of contemporary politics and the framework of constitutional history while assessing their significance. He transformed journalism about the Supreme Court from a score-keeping account of winners and losers to a rich narrative of the Court's role in a democracy grappling with profound questions about the meaning of justice for all.

Here, to offer just one example, are the first two paragraphs of his account of the decision in Reynolds v. Sims:

The Supreme Court held today that districts in both houses of state legislatures must be "substantially equal" in population. It was a decision of historic importance. Not since the school segregation cases 10 years ago had the Court interpreted the Constitution to require so fundamental a change in this country's institutions. (13) And he described Gideon v. Wainwright (14) on the day the decision was issued as "one of the most important ever made by the Supreme Court in the criminal law field," a decision that "could have a great impact across the country." (15) Note that Gideon was only one of six full opinions that came down on March 18, 1963, (16) filling nearly 200 pages of United States Reports (17) The Warren Court's habeas corpus landmarks, Townsend v. Sain (18) and Fay v. Noia, (19) were just two of the others. Tony accounted for the array of criminal cases in his story, which led with Gideon on page one and took up most of an inside page. (20) "This barrage of criminal law decisions, especially the Gideon case," he concluded, "should spur state efforts to set up new methods of providing counsel for indigents." (21)

Anthony Lewis and the Warren Court were a perfect match of writer and subject. It's well known that he had a deep personal interest in the reapportionment cases. (22) During his year at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow, 1956-57, he wrote an article arguing for the justiciability of the legislative apportionment question. (23) The article appeared in the Harvard Law Review in 1958. (24) Four years later, Justice Brennan cited it in his opinion for the Court in Baker v. Carr. (25) Here are Tony's first two paragraphs in his account of the reapportionment decision:

The Supreme Court held today that the distribution of seats in State Legislatures was subject to the constitutional scrutiny of the Federal courts. The historic decision was a sharp departure from the court's traditional reluctance to get into questions of fairness in legislative districting. It could significantly affect the nation-wide struggle of urban, rural, and suburban forces for political power. (26) As an aside, Tony's fellowship year at Harvard (from which he had graduated in 1948) was remarkable. (27) He spent his time at the law school, with the plan being that he would come back to the New York Times Washington Bureau, where James Reston had hired him in 1955, to cover the Supreme Court. (28) At the end of his year, Justice Felix Frankfurter, who had retained his ties to Harvard Law School after having taught there for twenty-three years, wrote to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the Times publisher, to say that Tony had shown "an astonishing aptitude for understanding even the most technical aspects of the Court's work." (29)

What a ringside seat to...

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