New York Times Legal Journalist Lincoln Caplan to Discuss Supreme Court Coverage February 28

CHESTERTOWN, MD— Celebrated legal journalist Lincoln Caplan, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, will share insights gleaned from years of covering the deliberations of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, February 28 at Washington College.

“Covering the Supreme Court: A Conversation with Lincoln Caplan of the New York Times Editorial Board” is hosted by the C.V. Starr Center for the study of the American Experience, and will begin at 5:00 pm at Center Stage, Hodson Commons (popularly known as The Egg). The event is co-sponsored by the Pre-Law Program and the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture, and is free and open to the public. It will be presented as an onstage conversation between Caplan and Adam Goodheart, the Starr Center’s Hodson Trust-Griswold Director. Questions from the audience will be welcome.

“Lincoln Caplan is one of the most brilliant legal journalists of our time,” Goodheart said. “For many years, he has enjoyed a front-row view of the Supreme Court, its personalities, and its processes. Few people are better positioned to offer insights into the Court’s recent decisions and future direction.”

In his role at the Times, Caplan drafts the paper’s unsigned editorials on the high court and its decisions. Previously he was the founder and editor of the acclaimed journal Legal Affairs. From 1998 until 2006, he was the Knight Senior Journalist at Yale Law School; he also taught nonfiction writing at the law school and in the Yale University English Department. Caplan holds degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and is a former White House Fellow. He has been a staff writer at the New Republic and The New Yorker, and was an editor at U.S. News & World Report. He is a member of the editorial board of The American Scholar and an adviser to the digital publication The Atavist.

Caplan is the author of five books, including The Insanity Defense and the Trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr., which (as excerpted in The New Yorker) won a Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and Skadden: Power, Money and the Rise of a Legal Empire (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994), an unprecedented look at the culture of American lawyering. Caplan’s 1987 book, The Tenth Justice: The Solicitor General and the Rule of Law (Alfred A. Knopf), won wide praise as a “lively, instructive” look at one of the least-appreciated offices in American law.

* * *

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to the American past and present. Through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach, and a special focus on the literary craft of history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between the academic world and the public at large. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.