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Linda Greenhouse covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times for 30 years and won a Pulitzer Prize for her efforts. She continues to do a special column for the paper and is on the teaching staff at Yale Law School. She received a master of laws degree from Yale University and wrote "Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey." She will speak at 7 p.m. Sunday at Temple Sinai in Squirrel Hill. For more information, call the temple at 412-421-9715 or send e-mail to office@templesinaipgh.org.
You've spent 30 years covering the Supreme Court. Did it ever get stale?
No, it never did. It was a sort of continuing adult education, just trying to get up to speed on the subject matter of every case and sort of watch the changing dynamic within the court itself. It kept it very fresh and interesting.
See the Speaking of that, how do you think Justice Sonia Sotomayor will affect the dynamics of the court?
She's going to be quite an active contributor. I haven't actually been to court, but I've read the transcripts of a number of the cases that have been argued and she jumped right in. I mean, she has a great deal of experience on the bench, more than just about anybody that's been named to the court in modern times. She is not hanging back waiting for the party to start. She is really going to be a player.
So how does a new face on the bench affect the group dynamic?
Just as Byron White, who saw more than a dozen justices come and go during his very long tenure, said, "Every time a new justice comes to the court, it's a different court." I think that's true. I mean, these are nine people and there is a lot of psychology about small group dynamics, but that applies really in spades at the court. So one change, one insertion of uncertainty, when people think they've kind of figured out the way their colleagues are going to respond and the way things go, can really make a major difference.
What about the element of personality?
Of course personality is part of it. Ideology is part of it, but I think not as strong a part of it as one might think, because it is ideology mediated through personal style, just the way you interact. Nobody can really afford to be in a posture of trying to throw your weight around. I think people that are in love with the sound of their own voice, or the weight of their own ideas, or have a sort of "my way or the highway" attitude, don't end up having a lot of internal influence.
Tell me, what challenges are unique to covering the Supreme Court?
Right, well, of course it's a deadline-driven job when the court is in session and they are issuing decisions. It's a particularly deadline-driven job when during the end of every term they start issuing two or three or four major opinions on the same day -- all at 10 o'clock in the morning. I sort of escaped before the complete onset of Web journalism. There is also a great deal of homework associated with the beat. You can't go to an argument or cover an argument if you haven't read the briefs, because the argument doesn't proceed in a linear fashion. The reporter has to bring that knowledge and somehow manage to convey that knowledge to readers even though it's not brought out in the courtroom and you can't show it through what people say. You know, I was always doing my homework, and I never felt I was 100 percent up to speed.
How do you think the change in the news cycle has impacted news gathering and the news itself in general?
It's one thing to sort of be able to write quickly about events that are unfolding in front of you, but you still need to report. You still need the background. Sources were not an issue at the Supreme Court. You really don't have any sources. If you are filing all the time, I'm not sure how the reporting gets done.
Do you think the confirmation process has become too partisan?
It always has a potential to become partisan. It's always hard to see the confirmation process itself divorced from the context of whatever else is going on in [the] politics of the moment. ... Now, I was quite astonished at the Sotomayor hearings this summer, where the partisanship seemed apropos of nothing. She got 30 or more Republican votes against her when she has gone out of her way not to say anything. That was something that transcended the nomination. It was laying down some kind of marker by the Republicans. I'm not sure what they thought they were accomplishing. It was a very strange spectacle. I'm still trying to get my hands around it.
Do you think the Supreme Court is representative of the will of the people? Does it have the pulse of America?
In general they are not in a great position to have their fingers on the pulse of the nation. They don't have great sources of information. They're kind of limited by the way arguments are framed and presented to them. They may think they know something, but they really don't. So how do judges know what they know? It's kind of an interesting question. Of course, they don't consciously see their role as implementing the will of the people, and they would deny that's what they are doing. They are supposed to be interpreting the Constitution or interpreting federal statutes and so on. The court is what you might call a lagging indicator of the will of the people. There is a book out now called "The Will of the People" by Barry Friedman, professor at New York University Law School, that does kind of track the way the court does ultimately reflect the consensus, even when that's not necessarily apparent in the moment. It's a very rich and interesting subject to contemplate.
Are certain topics and issues presented before the Supreme Court exciting for you?
Oh, yeah, the sort of underlying church-state stuff. That case that was argued [recently, Mojave Desert Cross as World War I war memorial,] isn't necessarily the most fruitful framework -- they got kind of way off the point. It is not a clean church-state case. One thing that is interesting about the Supreme Court, they have basically complete control over their own docket. They can choose what issues they want to address and what cases are going to be the vehicles for those issues.
So have you figured out the rhythm or reason to what they choose?
The most obvious marker of a case that will appeal to them is a case or issue on which the lower courts or federal courts have disagreed. The court sees this sort of frontline obligation of making sure that law means the same thing in one corner of the country as in another.
Mackenzie Carpenter's video program, "Omnivore," is available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
