The special section.

• Position: FOREWORD

I learned while readying this issue for publication that Linda Greenhouse was leaving her post as the Supreme Court correspondent at the New York Times. Had I been putting first things first, my initial reaction would have been to consider her departure's likely effect on the appellate world. And those thoughts would have prompted a moment's regret: Perhaps I should have asked her to write for Covering the Appellate Courts when I had the chance.

But that's not what happened. My first reaction was to tell myself that it couldn't be true. Greenhouse had been covering the Court since before I started law school, and despite having attended the thirtieth reunion of my college class in the spring, I was unwilling to credit a story that provided still more evidence of my advancing age. And as for regret, I didn't suffer any, even after realizing that I wouldn't have the opportunity to solicit a contribution from Greenhouse before she started at Yale.

I would of course have been happy to have Greenhouse as a contributor to Covering the Appellate Courts, but it already includes essays by two other members of that small but influential group of elite Supreme Court correspondents. Lyle Denniston of Scotusblog has been covering the Court for fifty years, and his incisive essay demonstrates that even in the Internet age, the best of the reporters covering the appellate courts feel driven not just to get the story, but also to understand the case behind it so well that they get the story right. Tony Mauro of American Lawyer Media has devoted years of his own to reporting...