Linda Greenhouse

Clinical Lecturer in Law, Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence, and Senior Research Scholar in Law
Education

M.S.L., Yale Law School, 1978

B.A., Radcliffe College (Harvard), 1968

Courses Taught
  • The Institutional Supreme Court
  • Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic
  • Warren Burger's Supreme Court
  • The Constitution of the Family: Emerging Issues
Linda Greenhouse

Linda Greenhouse is a Clinical Lecturer in Law, Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence, and a Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School. She covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times between 1978 and 2008 and continues to write regularly for the newspaper’s Opinion pages. Greenhouse received several major journalism awards during her 40-year career at the Times, including the Pulitzer Prize (1998) and the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University’s Kennedy School (2004). In 2002, the American Political Science Association gave her its Carey McWilliams Award for “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” Her books include a biography of Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Becoming Justice Blackmun; Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling (with Reva B. Siegel); The U.S. Supreme Court, A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press in 2012; The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right, with Michael J. Graetz, published in 2016; and a memoir, Just a Journalist: Reflections on the Press, Life, and the Spaces Between, published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Her latest book is Justice on the Brink: A Requiem for the Supreme Court (Random House, 2021). In her extracurricular life, Greenhouse served from 2017-2023 as president of the American Philosophical Society, the country's oldest learned society, which in 2005 awarded her its Henry Allen Moe Prize for writing in jurisprudence and the humanities. From 2004-2023, she served on the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is an honorary member of the American Law Institute, which in 2002 awarded her its Henry J. Friendly Medal. She has been awarded thirteen honorary degrees. She is a graduate of Radcliffe College (Harvard) and earned a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, which she attended on a Ford Foundation fellowship.

News

Books

Just a Journalist: On the Press, Life, and the Spaces Between (Harvard, 2017)

The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right (with Michael J. Graetz) 2016

The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012)

Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling (with Reva B. Siegel) 2010 (2d edition, 2012, http://documents.law.yale.edu/before-roe )

Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey, Times Books/Henry Holt, 2005.  (excerpted as Improbable Icon, The Green Bag Almanac & Reader 2006, pp. 36-50)

Book Chapter

Is It the Roberts Court? in The Health Care Case (Persily, Metzger, Morrison, eds.) (Oxford, 2013)

The Third Rehnquist Court, Foreword to The Rehnquist Legacy, Craig Bradley, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2006

Book Review

Was it the Era of 'O'Connorism?, 92 Judicature 169 (Jan.-Feb. 2009) (reviewing Nancy Maveety, "Queen's Court: Judicial Power in the Rehnquist Era")

Anthology

Equine Evolution: Our Creation, Our Concern in To the Swift: Classic Triple Crown Horses and Their Race for Glory, Joe Drape, ed., St. Martin’s Press, 2008

Journals and Law Review Articles

The Supreme Court and Science: A Case in Point, 147 Daedalus (Vol. 4) 28 (Fall 2018)

Books of the Justices (Foreword), 115 Mich. L. Rev. 733 (2017)

The Difference a Whole Woman Makes: Protection for the Abortion Right After Whole Woman's Health (with Reva B. Siegel) 126 Yale L.J.F. 149 (2016) http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-difference-a-whole-woman-makes

Casey and the Clinic Closings: When “Protecting Health” Obstructs Choice, 125 Yale L.J. 1428 ( 2016) (with Reva B. Siegel)

Backlash to the Future? From Roe to Perry, 60 UCLA L. Rev. Disc. 240 (2013) (with Reva Siegel)

Before (and After) Roe v. Wade: New Questions About Backlash120 YALE L.J.2028 (2011) (with Reva Siegel)

Justice John Paul Stevens as Abortion-Rights Strategist, 43 U.C. Davis Law Review 749 (Feb. 2010)

The Mystery of Guantánamo Bay, 27 Berkeley J. of International Law 1 (2009)

The Breyer Project, 4 Charleston Law R. 37 (Fall 2009)

The Counter-Factual Court (Brandeis Lecture) 47 U. of Louisville Law R. (Fall 2008)

Weighing Needs and Burdens:' Justice Breyer's Heller Dissent, 59 Syracuse Law Review 299 (2008)

How the Supreme Court Talks About Abortion: The Implications of a Shifting Discourse,42 Suffolk University Law Review 41 (2008)

What Would Justice Powell Do? The 'Alien Children' Case and the Meaning of Equal Protection, 25 Constitutional Commentary 29 (Spring 2008)

Dædalus, Volume 137, Issue 4  "On Judicial Independence" (Fall 2008) Guest Editor

Change and Continuity on the Supreme Court, 25 Washington U Journal of Law & Policy 39 (2007)

A Tale of Two Justices, 11 Green Bag 2d 37 (Autumn 2007)  

Justices Who Change: A Response to Epstein et al., 101 Northwestern Law Review 1885 (Fall 2007)

How Not To Be Chief Justice: The Apprenticeship of William H. Rehnquist, 154 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1365 (June 2006) 

Harry Blackmun, Independence and Path Dependence (Marvin Anderson Lecture), 56 Hastings Law Journal 1235 (June 2005)

What Got Into the Court? What Happens Next?, 57 Maine Law Review 1 (2005)

Learning to Listen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 7 New York City Law Review 213 (Fall 2004) 

Press Room Predictions, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 781 (December 2004)

Because We Are Final: Judicial Review Two Hundred Years After Marbury, 56 SMU L. Rev. 781 (2003)

The Last Days of the Rehnquist Court: The Rewards of Patience and Power, 45 Ariz. L. Rev. 251 (2003)

Between Certainty & Doubt: States of Mind on the Supreme Court Today, 6 Green Bag 2d 241 (2003) 

The Day Anthrax Came to the Supreme Court, 77 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 867 (2002) 

Thinking About the Supreme Court after Bush v. Gore, 35 Ind. L. Rev. 435 (2002)

The Courts Must Tell Their Story, 6 Harv. Int’l J. Press/Politics 117 (2001)

Learning to Live with Bush v. Gore, 4 Green Bag 2d 381 (2001)  

Telling the Court’s Story: Justice and Journalism at the Supreme Court, 105 Yale L. J. 1537 (1996)

Other Magazine Articles (since 1990)

The Evolution of a Justice, The New York Times Magazine, April 10, 2005

The Long Tale of Madonna the Iguana, The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 16, 2000

Horse Sense, The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 11, 1998

Supremely Sheltered, The New York Times Magazine, March 7, 1993