Linda Greenhouse’s 30-year tenure covering the U.S Supreme Court for The New York Times was longer than any sitting justice except for John Paul Stevens. She wrote more than 3,000 articles, won a Pulitzer Prize, and drew on her deep knowledge of how the court works to write The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction. Now, as justices prepare for the 2018-19 term and a pivotal seat remains to be filled, Linda is joined by ACLU National Legal Director David Cole to discuss recent and historical decisions, how cases are chosen, the relationship between the court and the public, the controversy over term limits, and this critical moment in the court and the country’s history. Book included with admission and a book signing to follow.

The series, Short Talks on Big Subjects features writers from the Oxford University Press Very Short Introductions books.

Linda Greenhouse became the Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School in 2009 and currently contributes a bi-weekly opinion column about the Supreme Court to The New York Times website.
In addition to The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction, Linda is also the author of Just a Journalist (2017), Becoming Justice Blackmun (2005);  Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling (with Reva B. Siegel), and The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right (with Michael J. Graetz).

Linda received numerous journalism awards during her 40-year career at The New York Times, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for her coverage of the Supreme Court; the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams Award for "a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics" in 2002; and the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania as well as the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard's Kennedy School in 2004. In 2008, the non-partisan Constitution Project gave her its annual award for constitutional commentary.

Linda 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.

David Cole was referred to by the late New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis as “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today,” and the late Nat Hentoff called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.”

Currently the National Legal Director of the ACLU, the nation’s largest and oldest civil liberties organization, David oversees the organization’s U.S. Supreme Court docket and directs a program that includes approximately 1,400 state and federal lawsuits on a broad range of civil liberties issues.

Cole has litigated many constitutional cases in the Supreme Court, most recently, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. He is on leave from Georgetown University, where he has taught constitutional law and criminal justice since 1990, and is the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy. Cole writes regularly for The Nation, New York Review of Books, Washington Post, and many other periodicals. He is the author or editor of ten books, several of which have won awards, including the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize, the American Book Award, and prizes from  the American Political Science Association, the Boston Book Review, and the Jesuit Honor Society.  His most recent book, Engines of Liberty: How Citizen Movements Succeed, published in 2016, examines the strategies civil society organizations employ to change constitutional law.

Cole has received two honorary degrees and many awards for his civil liberties and human rights work, including the inaugural Norman Dorsen Presidential Prize from the ACLU, awarded to an academic for lifetime commitment to civil liberties.