Marcia Coyle has covered the U.S. Supreme Court for ALM and its various publications including The National Law Journal for more than three decades. As she recently stepped down from her post as U.S. Supreme Court reporter, she took a look back at some of the legal milestones handed down from the high court's bench. —Christine Schiffner, NLJ Bureau Chief The U.S. Supreme Court is the strangest beat for a Washington reporter. Unlike covering the White House, Justice Department or Congress, there is little contact with the main sources of information. Instead, legal briefs, oral arguments and the experience, skills and insights of advocates and scholars become the reporter's coins of the realm. Thirty-five years ago, nominee Robert Bork said being on the court would be "an intellectual feast." It is that and more for a SCOTUS reporter. It is a seat at history-in-the-making, a seat this reporter has held for 35 years. Each Supreme Court is the guardian of the institution's history and each Supreme Court, like today's Roberts Court, adds to that history through its decisions, its members' deaths, confirmation hearings, and its response to certain external events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 1987, Justice Lewis Powell Jr. retired and soon afterward, President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork as his successor. With that nomination, the country engaged in an unusual and intense debate over the meaning of the Constitution and the existence of a right to privacy. No one would have guessed at the time that 35 years later, at least four Supreme Court justices would claim adherence to a form of Bork originalism. But many would have suspected that the Bork hearing was the true beginning of what one legal scholar would later title his book, "The Confirmation Mess." Bork's controversial opinions and writings, including opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the one man, one vote decision, and denial of a right to privacy, triggered an all-out campaign in newspaper and TV ads, lobbying and mass mailings by liberal and civil rights groups to defeat his nomination—a campaign that the nation would experience again and again. It was heady stuff for journalists covering the confirmation hearings, including this reporter who was only a few months into the Supreme Court beat. In cab rides shuttling from office to hearing room and back again, drivers had the Bork hearings on the radio and were eager to talk about what this rather strange-looking nominee with the frizzy hair and beard and stand-offish manner was saying. In the end, his nomination went down in the Senate, 58-42, the largest margin in history. "The nomination changed everything, maybe forever," one Supreme Court advocate said years later. The Bork hearings were eclipsed in 1991 by the Clarence Thomas hearings, which ignited another national debate, this one about race and sexual harassment. They left the nation with unforgettable images of a young Anita Hill, alone at the witness table in her blue lawyer suit, and a deeply angry nominee accusing the Senate committee of "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves." Thomas was nominated to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights giant, and who, with Justice William Brennan, were the "liberal lions" of the court. Marshall actually held what would be considered today an unheard-of press conference on his retirement. In a room packed with reporters and cameras, he said with characteristic bluntness in response to why he was retiring, "I'm old. I'm getting old and coming apart." The first person he informed of his decision was Brennan, who had retired earlier. The late court scholar Bernard Schwartz later wrote that with their retirements, "No one thunders. No one roars." And 27 years later, the Thomas hearings, a faded memory for many young people, would be thrust to the fore again as nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced a sexual assault allegation from his high school years. Like Thomas' "high-tech lynching" comment, Kavanaugh's angry, tearful, partisan-laced response that "what goes around comes around" in U.S. politics would not be soon forgotten. |

The Decisions

For most Americans, confirmation hearings are the closest, public view of the justices that they will have. Their views of the justices will be formed largely by the court's decisions. A number of decisions stand out for their more recent imprint on history and for the public's strong reactions. >> A woman's constitutional right to an abortion appeared in serious trouble in 1992 when the justices took up Planned Parenthood v. Casey. On June 29, a packed courtroom witnessed the dramatic and unprecedented announcement of the court's decision upholding the right by a trio of justices, each taking his or her turn to read parts of the ruling. >> On the evening of Dec. 12, 2000, the nation and a Supreme Court press room overflowing with American and foreign reporters awaited the outcome of the battle for the presidency. The then clerk of the court, William Suter, later told this reporter that he held the paper decision in Bush v. Gore in his hands a little longer than he normally would before releasing it because he wanted to savor the historical moment. Reaction in editorials and by the public was swift and particularly negative from supporters of Democratic candidate Al Gore. The decision has been the subject of numerous law review articles. The late Justice Antonin Scalia offered a classic response to critics of the court: "Get over it!" And a decision that said it was good only for that case reared its head multiple times during recent Supreme Court arguments on the "independent state legislature" theory. With the arrival of the Roberts Court in 2005, the public witnessed a series of landmark rulings that divided it as much as the justices themselves divided. >> In 2008, members of the public hoping for a courtroom seat were in a line that snaked to the street on the Sunday night before Tuesday arguments in the Second Amendment showdown, District of Columbia v. Heller. The line grew around the block by Tuesday. >> In his state of the union address, President Barack Obama called out the court for its decision in Citizens United v. FEC, allowing unlimited independent corporate and union expenditures for political campaigns, and Justice Samuel Alito mouthed "no," shaking his head at Obama's description of its effect, in an image sent across news wires. Alito's expressions drew national attention even earlier when he rolled his eyes during Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's reading of a dissenting opinion in an employment discrimination case. You had to be in the courtroom to catch it, and, of course, the press was there. >> In 2012, the justices held three days of marathon arguments on Obama's signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act. On the June day of the decision, the courtroom was packed and the justices appeared tense and tired. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. announced the opinion and initially seemed to strike down the law on commerce clause grounds, but after some length, upheld it as a tax. Justice Anthony Kennedy, visibly angry, read the joint dissent by him, Scalia, Thomas and Alito. >> Nothing can yet compare to the display of absolute joy in 2015 when the justices announced their same-sex marriage decision. Inside the courtroom and the bar section in particular, there was restrained happiness, but outside a large, jubilant crowd spilled onto the plaza, which was not allowed, but where the Supreme Court police stood on the front steps of the court letting it unfold. The Supreme Court is a vessel of many more indelible moments, good and bad: The sight of Ginsburg's coffin at the top of the court's front steps as the public paid its respects to this national icon; the unprecedented leak of the draft opinion eliminating a woman's constitutional right to abortion; the eight-foot fence surrounding the court to protect it from protestors of the abortion decision; the justices struggling with mute buttons during telephonic arguments; two chief justices presiding over separate impeachments of presidents, and the first Black woman justice. That vessel also holds innumerable outstanding, sometimes history-making oral arguments by advocates, such as Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Theodore Olson, Hogan Lovells' Neal Katyal, the late Bruce Ennis of Jenner & Block, Clement & Murphy's Paul Clement, Williams & Connolly's Lisa Blatt, Latham & Watkins' Gregory Garre, Covington & Burling's Beth Brinkmann, David Frederick of Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, Munger, Tolles & Olson's Donald Verrilli Jr., Morrison & Foerster's Deanne Maynard, Sidley Austin's Carter Phillips and many others. And now a new generation of advocates has emerged with names and faces sure to become familiar to the high court. William Howard Taft, a president and a chief justice, once said: "Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever." And what Taft said of presidents is also true of SCOTUS reporters.