The Art, Craft, and Future of Legal Journalism: A Tribute to Anthony Lewis

In the modern era, few performed this function better than Anthony Lewis, the legendary U.S. Supreme Court reporter and columnist for The New York Times, who died in March 2013. A pioneer in the coverage of law and the courts, Lewis is widely credited with being one of the founders of contemporary legal journalism. Through a remarkable career that included two Pulitzer Prizes and five books, Lewis taught by example a generation of journalists how to cover the law with accuracy, insight, perspective, and passion. While the law can often be dry and technical, and cases idiosyncratic, Lewis showed legal journalists how to communicate the issues to readers in a compelling way, demystifying the complexities of law, bringing out the practical importance of the seemingly arcane, and – perhaps most important – making readers care about the law and its role in the world around them.