Journal of Supreme Court History

A n th o n y L e w is : P io n e e r in th e C o u rt’s P re s s ro o m KJIHGFEDCBA LYLE DENNISTONzyxwvutsrqponml Am e ricans with a s e ns eo fhis to ry , and s o m ekno wle dge o f it, like to think o f journalists who open new frontiers in their craft as inevitably muckrakers, or fierce and uncompromising agents of radical change. If every pioneeringjournalist was an Ida Tarbell or Lincoln Steffens or Upton Sinclair, that perception would be right. Those pioneers had the courage to break the mold, to take on the power elites of their day and compel them to bend to the public good. Theirjournalism had about it the capacity to coerce reform, sometimes by the bludgeon of shock. H. L. Mencken in his day did his fair share ofpuncturing inflated public egos, but it is remarkable how little social reform came at his instigation. His wit was deliciously wicked, and his fascination with philology could well be emulated by journalists of all eras. But his work was mainly for parlor amusement, not social improvement. In modem times, perhaps closest to the muckraker would be Bob Woodward of onmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The Washington Post—at least when he was a reporter before becoming a commentator or pundit—and got into public spats with the White House. Woodward, together with Carl Bernstein, put an end to the practice of Washingtonjournalists looking the other way when something did not seem right in public affairs. Finding the truth required a dogged determination, and no weekends off. The list of post-Watergate reforms that their work stimulated is impressive, indeed. Another kind ofjournalistic pioneer uses the instrument of daily news coverage to de­ fog history or unravel mysteries for ordinary people and puts the seemingly unreachable or inaccessible within the easy grasp of the average citizen. In this genre one would have to put the war correspondents: Mathew Brady with his camera, Ernie Pyle with his pencil and pad, Bill Mauldin with his cartoonist’s sketch pad, David Halberstam with his tape recorder. A rarer breed of this kind of pioneer would be Joseph Anthony Lewis, who died in March at age eighty-five after a remarkably rich career with The New York Times, enlivening the sometimes-arcane world of the law for his readers. A somewhat A N T H O N Y L E W IS : P IO N E E R IN T H E C O U R T ’S P R E S S R O O M KJIHGFEDCBA 433 A n th o n y L e w is w o r k e d fo r th ir y -tw o y e a r s a s a c o lu m n is t fo r The New York Times, ta k in g u p s u c h c a u s e s a s fr e e s p e e c h , h u m a n r ig h ts a n d c o n s titu tio n a l la w . H e w o n h is fir s t P u litz e r P r iz e in 1 9 5 5 a s a r e p o r te r d e fe n d in g a N a v y c iv ilia n fa ls e ly a c c u s e d o f b e in g a c o m m u n is t s y m p a th iz e r , a n d h e w o n a g a in in 1 9 6 3 fo r r e p o r tin g o n th e S u p r e m e C o u r t. H e is p ic tu r e d a b o v e r e a d in g a b o u t h is s e c o n d P u litz e r P...