Linda Greenhouse

Last updated
Linda Greenhouse
Kissel Lecture in Ethics with Linda Greenhouse (cropped) (cropped).jpg
Greenhouse in 2019
Born
Linda Joyce Greenhouse

(1947-01-09) January 9, 1947 (age 77)
New York City, U.S.
Education Radcliffe College (AB)
Yale University (MSL)
OccupationJournalist
Spouse
​
(m. 1981)​
Children Hannah Fidell
Awards Pulitzer Prize (1998)
Henry J. Friendly Medal (2002)

Linda Joyce Greenhouse (born January 9, 1947) is an American legal journalist who is the Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. [1] She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has covered the United States Supreme Court for nearly three decades for The New York Times . [2] Since 2017, she is the president of the American Philosophical Society, [3] and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Senate. [4]

Contents

Early life and education

Greenhouse was born in a Jewish family [5] [6] in New York City, to H. Robert Greenhouse, a physician and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Dorothy (née Greenlick). She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in government from Radcliffe College in 1968, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School in 1978, [7] [8] during which time she was a student of Robert Bork. [9]

Career

Linda Greenhouse (left) at the Phi Beta Kappa Book Awards Dinner in Washington, DC on December 7, 2018. LINDA GREENHOUSE PHI BETA KAPPA BOOK AWARDS DINNER 2018.png
Linda Greenhouse (left) at the Phi Beta Kappa Book Awards Dinner in Washington, DC on December 7, 2018.

Greenhouse began her 40-year career at The New York Times covering state government in the paper's bureau in Albany. [2] After completing her master's degree on a Ford Foundation fellowship, she returned to the Times and covered 29 sessions of the Supreme Court from 1978 to 2007, [10] with the exception of two years during the mid-1980s during which she covered Congress. [7] Since 1981, she has published over 2,800 articles in the Times. [11] She has been a regular guest on the PBS program Washington Week . [12]

In 2008, Greenhouse accepted an offer from The New York Times for an early retirement at the end of the Supreme Court session in the summer of 2008. [13] [14] Seven of the nine sitting Justices attended a goodbye party for Greenhouse on June 12, 2008. [14]

In 2010, Greenhouse and co-author Reva Siegel put out a book on the development of the abortion debate prior to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on the subject: Before Roe v. Wade . This was largely a selection of primary documents, though with some commentary.

From 2010 to 2021, Greenhouse wrote a biweekly opinion column for The New York Times, centered on the Supreme Court. [15]

Greenhouse criticized US policies and actions at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Haditha in a 2006 speech at Harvard University. [16] In it, Greenhouse said she started crying a few years back at a Simon & Garfunkel concert because her generation hadn't done a better job of running the country than previous generations. [17]

Awards and prizes

Greenhouse was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism (Beat Reporting) in 1998 "for her consistently illuminating coverage of the United States Supreme Court." [7] In 2004, she received the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism [18] and the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. [19] She was a Radcliffe Institute Medal winner in 2006. [20]

When she was at Radcliffe, she said in a speech given in 2006, "I was the Harvard stringer for the Boston Herald , which regularly printed, and paid me for, my accounts of student unrest and other newsworthy events at Harvard. But when it came time during my senior year to look for a job in journalism, the Herald would not even give me an interview, and neither would the Boston Globe , because these newspapers had no interest in hiring women." [17]

Criticism

Greenhouse has expressed her personal views as an outspoken advocate for abortion and critic of conservative religious values, [16] and a 2006 report on NPR questioned whether this compromised the appearance that she maintains journalistic neutrality on such matters. New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent said that he has never received a single complaint of bias in Greenhouse's coverage. [16]

Conflict of interest

Ed Whelan, writing in a blog associated with National Review , suggested that Greenhouse had an obligation to her readers to inform them when she reported on a Supreme Court case for which her husband, Eugene Fidell, had submitted an amicus brief, [21] such as in the Hamdan case and the Boumediene case. Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times, opined that the paper "should have clued in readers" to Greenhouse's conflict, but defended the neutrality of her coverage. [22] Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick, writing in Slate , complained that the New York Times "had failed to stand up" for Greenhouse and defended Greenhouse from Whelan's criticism. [23] They quoted Yale Law School professor Judith Resnik who pointed out that Whelan had been unable to point to any actual sign of bias.

Personal life

She married lawyer Eugene R. Fidell on January 1, 1981, in Washington, D.C., in a Jewish ceremony. [24] Together they have one daughter, filmmaker Hannah Fidell (born October 7, 1985). [25]

Works

Related Research Articles

<i>Yale Daily News</i> Student newspaper of Yale University

The Yale Daily News is an independent student newspaper published by Yale University students in New Haven, Connecticut since January 28, 1878. It is the oldest college daily newspaper in the United States.

Jay Anthony Lukas was an American journalist and author, best known for his 1985 book Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. Common Ground is a classic study of race relations, class conflict, and school busing in Boston, Massachusetts, as seen through the eyes of three families: one upper-middle-class white, one working-class white, and one working-class African-American.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Lewis</span> American journalist (1927–2013)

Joseph Anthony Lewis was an American public intellectual and journalist. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and was a columnist for The New York Times. He is credited with creating the field of legal journalism in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Authors Guild</span> American professional organization

The Authors Guild is America's oldest and largest professional organization for writers and provides advocacy on issues of free expression and copyright protection. Since its founding in 1912 as the Authors League of America, it has counted among its board members notable authors of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including numerous winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. It has over 9,000 members, who receive free legal advice and guidance on contracts with publishers as well as insurance services and assistance with subsidiary licensing and royalties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Ashmore</span> American journalist

Harry Scott Ashmore was an American journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials in 1957 on the school integration conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Jean Valentine was an American poet and the New York State Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drew Gilpin Faust</span> American historian and college administrator

Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust is an American historian who served as the 28th president of Harvard University, the first woman in that role. She was Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard and the first to have been raised in the South. Faust is also the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has been ranked among the world's most powerful women by Forbes, including as the 33rd most powerful in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Liptak</span> American journalist and lawyer

Adam Liptak is an American journalist, lawyer and instructor in law and journalism. He is the Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times.

The Harvard Law Record is an independent student-edited newspaper based at Harvard Law School. Founded in 1946, it is the oldest law school newspaper in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burger Court</span> Period of the US Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986

The Burger Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1969 to 1986, when Warren E. Burger served as Chief Justice of the United States. Burger succeeded Earl Warren as Chief Justice after the latter's retirement, and served as Chief Justice until his retirement, at which point William Rehnquist was nominated and confirmed as Burger's replacement. The Burger Court is generally considered to be the last liberal court to date. It has been described as a "transitional" court, due to its transition from having the liberal rulings of the Warren Court to the conservative rulings of the Rehnquist Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eliza Griswold</span> American writer

Eliza Griswold is a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist and poet. Griswold is currently a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. She is the author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, a 2018 New York Times Notable Book and a Times Critics’ Pick, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Ridenhour Book Prize in 2019. Griswold was a fellow at the New America Foundation from 2008 to 2010 and won a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a former Nieman Fellow and a current Berggruen Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, and has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pamela S. Karlan</span> American legal scholar (born 1959)

Pamela Susan Karlan is an American legal scholar who was the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice from February 8, 2021 until July 1, 2022. She is a professor at Stanford Law School. A leading legal scholar on voting rights and constitutional law, she previously served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division from 2014 to 2015.

Stanton v. Stanton, 421 U.S. 7 (1975), is a United States Supreme Court case which struck down Utah's definitions of adulthood as a violation of equal protection: females reached adulthood at 18; males at 21.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farah Stockman</span> American journalist (born 1974)

Farah Nisa Stockman is an American journalist who has worked for The Boston Globe and is currently employed by The New York Times. In 2016, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanford Levinson</span> American political writer

Sanford Victor Levinson is an American legal scholar known for his writings on constitutional law. A professor at the University of Texas Law School, Levinson is notable for his criticism of the United States Constitution as well as excessive presidential power and has been widely quoted on such topics as the Second Amendment, gay marriage, nominations to the Supreme Court, and other legal issues. He has called for a Second Constitutional Convention of the United States.

The Greenhouse effect is a theory of U.S. Supreme Court justices' behavior postulate a tendency of conservative Supreme Court Justices to vote with the liberals more often as their careers progress due to a desire for favorable press coverage. The idea was first proposed by Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell and popularized by D.C. Court of Appeals Senior Judge Laurence Silberman in a speech to The Federalist Society in 1992. Silberman said "It seems that the primary objective of The Times's legal reporters is to put activist heat on recently appointed Supreme Court justices."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugene R. Fidell</span>

Eugene Roy Fidell is an American lawyer specializing in military law. He is currently the Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Fidell</span> American film director

Hannah Margalit Fidell is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Her directorial debut was the drama film A Teacher (2013). She also wrote and directed the romantic drama film 6 Years (2015) and the comedy film The Long Dumb Road (2018).

Carol J. Greenhouse is an American anthropologist known for her scholarship on law, time, democracy, and neoliberalism. She is currently professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University, where she previously served as Arthur W. Marks Professor of Anthropology and Department Chair. She is also the former president of the American Ethnological Society (2013-2015), former editor of its peer-review journal, American Ethnologist (1998-2002), and former president of both the Law and Society Association (1996-1997) and Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (1999-2001).

References

  1. ↑ "Yale Faculty: Linda Greenhouse". Yale Law School . 31 August 2023. Archived from the original on 9 September 2015. Retrieved 10 February 2009.
  2. 1 2 "Talk to the Newsroom: Supreme Court Reporter". The New York Times . July 14, 2008. Archived from the original on April 20, 2019. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
  3. ↑ "Officers & Council". Archived from the original on 2019-08-13. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  4. ↑ "PBK - Phi Beta Kappa Leadership". Archived from the original on 2019-01-26. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  5. ↑ Brennan, Elizabeth A.; Clarage, Elizabeth C. (December 17, 1998). Who's who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. Greenwood. p. 6. ISBN   9781573561112.
  6. ↑ Prager, Dennis (May 4, 2010). "When Jews on the Left See Americans on the Right as Nazis". Jewish Journal . Archived from the original on January 26, 2017. Retrieved September 4, 2018. Another liberal Jewish commentator for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse, likened the situation of illegal immigrants in Arizona to that of the Jews of Nazi-occupied Denmark.
  7. 1 2 3 "Pulitzer Prize Winners 1998: Beat Reporting - Biography". Pulitzer.org. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2007-08-09.
  8. ↑ "Yale Law School : M.S.L. Program". Archived from the original on October 6, 2007. Retrieved October 7, 2007.
  9. ↑ Supreme Revenge: Linda Greenhouse Interview, archived from the original on 2023-02-08, retrieved 2023-02-08
  10. ↑ Greenhouse, Linda (2008-07-13). "2,691 Decisions". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 2020-01-12. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
  11. ↑ "Linda Greenhouse". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 2007-10-13. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
  12. ↑ "Washington Week. Linda Greenhouse". PBS. Archived from the original on 2007-09-11. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
  13. ↑ "NYT's Greenhouse Takes Buyout Offer". Houston Chronicle . 2008-02-27. Archived from the original on 2008-03-02. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
  14. 1 2 Tony Mauro (June 12, 2008). "A Goodbye for Greenhouse". Legal Times. Archived from the original on 2019-01-08. Retrieved 2008-06-15.
  15. ↑ "Opinion - Linda Greenhouse - Do We Have the Supreme Court We Deserve?". New York Times. 2021-12-30. Archived from the original on 2022-04-14. Retrieved 2022-04-14.
  16. 1 2 3 Folkenflik, David (26 September 2006). "Critics Question Reporter's Airing of Personal Views". All Things Considered. Archived from the original on 2018-12-16. Retrieved 2007-08-09.
  17. 1 2 "2006 Radcliffe Institute Medalist Linda Greenhouse '68". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Archived from the original on 2007-08-26. Retrieved 2007-08-09.
  18. ↑ "Goldsmith Career Award". The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University. Archived from the original on 2007-09-01. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
  19. ↑ "John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism - Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism". Archived from the original on 2008-01-11. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
  20. ↑ "Linda Greenhouse '68 Wins 2006 Radcliffe Institute Medal" (Press release). Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. 2006-06-08. Archived from the original on 2006-09-01. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
  21. ↑ Ed Whelan (13 December 2007). "Linda Greenhouse's Ethical In-Fidell-ity". Bench Memos, National Review Online. Archived from the original on 29 February 2008. Retrieved 2009-06-03.
  22. ↑ Clark Hoyt (20 January 2008). "Public and Private Lives, Intersecting". New York Times. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
  23. ↑ Emily Bazelon; Dahlia Lithwick (January 22, 2008). "Lay Off Linda: Why doesn't the New York Times stand up for Linda Greenhouse?". Slate magazine . Archived from the original on January 28, 2008. Retrieved January 25, 2008. Whelan didn't point to any concrete problem with Greenhouse's handling of these cases. That should be easier to do than with almost any other reporter, given that Greenhouse relies primarily on court filings and oral arguments that are publicly available in their entirety, as Yale law professor Judith Resnik points out to us. Unable to point to any actual bias, Whelan resorts to the petulant claim that the effect of Fidell's involvement in the detainee cases 'would be impossible to separate ... from the broader political bias that pervades so much of Greenhouse's reporting.
  24. ↑ "Linda Greenhouse Bride of Eugene R. Fidell". The New York Times. January 2, 1981. Archived from the original on October 1, 2017. Retrieved December 20, 2017.
  25. ↑ Brennan, Elizabeth A.; Clarage, Elizabeth C. (1999). Who's who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. Greenwood Publishing. p. 6. ISBN   9781573561112 . Retrieved October 2, 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.