The Rigorous Romantic: Anthony Lewis on the Supreme Court Beat

Tony Lewis called himself “a romantic about the Supreme Court.” If he had not been a romantic when he took up the beat for the New York Times in 1957, he surely would have become one as, for the next seven years, he chronicled the Warren Court’s progressive constitutional revolution at the peak of its energy and transformative power. To list just some of the landmark opinions the Court issued during those seven years is to prove the point: Cooper v. Aaron, Mapp v. Ohio, Baker v. Carr, Engel v. Vitale, Gideon v. Wainwright, Brady v. Maryland, School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Reynolds v. Sims, Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States. “Historic Change in the Supreme Court” was the headline on a New York Times Magazine article of Tony’s that ran in the midst of it all, in June 1962, an article to which I shall return, because it reveals as much about its author as it did about its subject.