This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 4, 2011 - Linda Greenhouse was a student at Radcliffe College when James C. Millstone was writing about the U.S. Supreme Court for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But the two shared the same tough-minded approach to journalism and love for the often misunderstood institution they covered.
On Wednesday, Greenhouse, the former New York Times reporter who was the most outstanding Supreme Court correspondent of her generation, comes to St. Louis to deliver the lecture named after Millstone, the "conscience" of the Post-Dispatch newsroom and mentor to a generation of reporters. Millstone died in 1992 at age 62.
Greenhouse will talk about Millstone's twin passions, journalism and the court. On Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., she will deliver the 17th James C. Millstone lecture at Saint Louis University on the topic: "She said. He said. Who says?" The free lecture will be in the Xavier Grand Ballroom, Grand and Lindell Boulevards. The following day she will join a noontime panel in the William H. Kniep courtroom at the law school to discuss the direction of the Roberts court.
The Supreme Courts that Millstone and Greenhouse covered could hardly have been more different. Millstone wrote about the Earl Warren court of the 1960s, known for landmark civil rights and civil liberties decisions that gave a broad reading to the Constitution's protection of the rights of protesters, criminal defendants, racial minorities and religious outsiders.
Greenhouse, who covered the court for the Times from 1978-2007, wrote about the Warren Burger and William Rehnquist courts, which reacted to the Warren era by limiting its most expansive decisions but seldom overturning them.
Greenhouse, like Millstone, went out of her way to explain not just who won a court case but the reasoning behind the justices' decision. And, like Millstone, Greenhouse shows a reluctance to draw easy, conventional conclusions about the court.
For example, during an interview with Don Marsh last week on KWMU, Greenhouse said she was pleased as "the mother of a daughter" that three women sit on the Supreme Court, rather than "one or two lonely women." But she was hesitant to say that "a woman equals x outcome on the Supreme Court" and predicted that the women suing Wal-Mart have an uphill battle in the class-action case that was argued last week.
Asked about Clarence Thomas' long silence from the bench and the conflict-of-interest questions that critics have raised recently, she suggested that the critics were partly motivated by their disagreement with his opinions. If the critics "were more comfortable with the way he votes, we wouldn't being hearing so much criticism," she said.
Greenhouse said she had enjoyed her "ringside seat" watching the one branch of the government "where there is nobody out there spinning."
Millstone could be blunt and impatient with mindless journalism. So, too, is Greenhouse. She described her lecture as a "riff on the reflexive norm that you have to get two sides on every story, even if it has only one side or a lot of sides."
She said this "simplistic approach" often "frames the world as a dichotomy" and suggests that "every idea is equal to every other idea."
"If a U.S. District judge issues an opinion, that's the story. And the need to find someone to criticize the decision is less than helpful."
Sometimes reporters reach out for critics with questionable expertise who are always willing to be quoted. She called this tendency "sloppy" but "common."
Instead, she would "go to the trouble of reading the briefs and explain the side that doesn't prevail. That is more difficult than calling up someone who will take a potshot at the judge."
Many mainstream news organizations are "gun shy" because of the "bullies" who criticize them. They think that "touching all the bases will insulate them from criticism." Instead Greenhouse urges a journalist to "bring intelligence to bear on what he knows has happened."
Earlier this year, in a conversation over dinner, Greenhouse pointed out the absurdity of calling the Tucson shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, the "alleged shooter" of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, when everyone knows that he pulled the trigger.
Greenhouse, retired from the Times, teaches constitutional law at Yale Law School. Today's students are more concerned about the economic situation than her generation of students, she said. But she added that "there are people who feel in their bones a call to journalism and they are willing to make some sacrifices and not go to Wall Street and have the sheer fun of doing it. Because it is a lot of fun."
William H. Freivogel is director of the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a professor at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. Freivogel covered the Supreme Court when he worked on the Washington bureau of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He is also a board member of the St. Louis Beacon, which cosponsors the Millstone lecture.