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Linda Greenhouse: The Farewell Tour

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:57 PM - By David Lat

Linda Greenhouse 6 New York Times Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpgAs we’ve previously confessed, “[w]e have a strange obsession with Linda Greenhouse, the Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times.” We’re looking forward to her speech at tonight’s Yale Law School D.C. alumni dinner almost as much as the season premiere of Project Runway (which we’ll watch as soon as we get home).

Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author, has covered the SCOTUS for almost 30 years. Back in February, she confirmed to ATL the rumors of her departure from the Supreme beat. In January 2009, she will become a journalist-in-residence and senior fellow at Yale Law School.

In connection with her departure from the hallowed halls of the Times, she’s been doing a lot of looking back on her time covering the Court. In Sunday’s Week in Review, she penned this great retrospective. The analysis is thoughtful and penetrating, but our favorite parts were the gossipy tidbits:

I admired Chief Justice Rehnquist as a strategist and tactician; he knew what he wanted and knew his limits, just as in his weekly poker game he knew when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. Justice Antonin Scalia, who joined the court in 1986, was a flashier attention-grabber, but I never had any doubt that William Rehnquist was the brains behind the court’s ascendant conservatives.

He took his role seriously, but himself less so (unlike his stuffy predecessor, Warren E. Burger, the first chief justice of my tenure). When he emerged from behind the courtroom’s velvet curtain one morning in 1995 sporting four gold stripes on each sleeve of his robe — with some of his colleagues struggling to suppress smiles — many people saw pomposity, but I saw a wry or maybe even self-mocking comment on the boredom of basic black after 23 years on the court. He had another 10 years to go.

We had nothing approaching a confidential relationship, but we did chat now and then. On the morning after the 2000 presidential election, I ran into him on the court’s plaza as he was taking his morning walk. Wasn’t it amazing, we agreed, that the outcome of the election was still in doubt.

Indeed. Read more, below the fold.

Here’s what LG had to say about SOC (yes, SOC; true SCOTUS groupies know that around One First Street, Justice O’Connor went by “SOC,” not “SDO”):

[N]othing touched me as much as the arrival in September 1981 of Sandra Day O’Connor. I had never heard her name before President Ronald Reagan nominated her that summer to succeed Potter Stewart. Although I covered her confirmation hearing, she remained to me basically a blank slate. That didn’t matter. The first time I looked up from the press section and saw a woman sitting on the bench, I was thrilled in a way I would never have predicted. Her presence invaded my subconscious. I had recurring dreams about her. In one, she asked me my opinion on a pending case (something no justice ever did in real life). But mostly, she just had walk-on roles in ordinary nighttime dramas, her presence signifying what it meant to me to know that there was no longer a position in the legal profession that a woman could not aspire to.

Four summers later, I was pregnant. Encountering me in a hallway, Justice O’Connor asked me when the baby was due. “Just before the first Monday in October,” I replied. Sandra Day O’Connor, mother of three, laughed. “Oh, keep your legs crossed,” she urged. “Don’t let that baby come out until the First Monday!” Some 30 minutes into the first Monday in October 1985, my daughter, Hannah, came into the world. I later learned that right before going on the bench that morning for the term’s opening session, Justice O’Connor called the court’s public information office and asked: “Has anyone heard from Linda? Did she have her baby today?”

Greenhouse is also doing an online chat with Times readers. Here’s a fun excerpt, noticed by Romenesko:

Q. What was the most surreal moment you witnessed during your tenure?

A. It had to have been the day and night I spent in the Supreme Court press room on Dec. 12, 2000, waiting for the court to hand down its decision in the presidential election case, Bush v. Gore. …As the hours passed, my editors kept calling. What did I know? I knew nothing. Dinner time came. Everyone was afraid to leave the press room. The court cafeteria was closed, and there was no convenient place to get anything to eat. One of the TV news crews ordered in some pizzas. I had assumed the opinion would come at any minute and had neglected to join in their order. As I watched them eat, I realized I was starving, and one of them gave me a bit of crust to chew on.

The doyenne of the Supreme Court press corps, chewing on a crust of pizza. Charming.

Hopefully Greenhouse will be better fed at tonight’s YLSA dinner, where she’s delivering the keynote address. We look forward to seeing her and conveying our good luck wishes in person.

Greenhouse on her most surreal moment covering SCOTUS [Poynter Online / Romenesko]
Talk to the Newsroom: Supreme Court Reporter [New York Times]
2,691 Decisions [New York Times]

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Linda Greenhouse (scroll down)

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