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Adam Liptak, to put it lightly, is a Supreme Court expert.
For more than 18 years, he has covered the justices and their annual docket of scores of cases for The New York Times, writing about landmark rulings and their consequences for everyday Americans. From 2007 until earlier this month, he also wrote the Sidebar column, a series of wide-ranging dispatches that examined issues and people in the world of law.
Now, he is writing a new newsletter, The Docket, that aims to explain the most pressing legal questions of the day. Published weekly on Thursdays, it will answer reader questions, help make sense of the cacophony of developments related to the Trump administration, and explore legal issues both weighty and quirky.
“If I do it right, it’ll be both informative and entertaining,” said Mr. Liptak, who is based in Washington.
In an interview, Mr. Liptak, The Times’s chief legal affairs correspondent, shared what people can expect from the newsletter, how his 14 years practicing law before becoming a journalist have helped him navigate the beat, and the cases he has his eye on for 2026. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You’ve written the Sidebar column for 19 years. How did you get the idea for The Docket?
I wanted to write more broadly and distinctively about not only the Supreme Court, but other aspects of the justice system. In the Sidebar column, I tried to look at legal developments from a fresh perspective. My editor, Roz Helderman, and The Times’s newsletters director, Jodi Rudoren, thought there was a place for a version of that column, but a bit more ambitious, with a sense of informality and interaction with readers.
What is your vision for the newsletter?
Lawyers and judges write long briefs and opinions laden with legal jargon, and just cutting through that noise and turning it into accessible, reasonably short conversational English is a real journalistic goal. Also, particularly in this era, the sheer number of legal developments — which seem to arrive by the hour — can be overwhelming, and I think there’s a desire by readers to have someone put those in context and identify themes and trends. I’ll give them a sense of what the likely outcomes are, and what the consequences of decisions might be.
The Docket will be a little like Sidebar, and substantially different from it, too. The Sidebar column wanted to execute one insight, one thought, in 800 or 900 words. Here, we want to have several reported pieces, answer some questions from readers, give a sense of what I’m reading and have an overview of The Times’s exceptional legal coverage in other areas.
How does having practiced law for 14 years before you became a journalist help your reporting?
I was a civil litigator specializing in First Amendment issues. Having gone to law school makes it a little easier to digest legal materials, although plenty of good legal reporters haven’t done that. When I was part of the Supreme Court press corps, maybe half of the reporters had law degrees — but everyone who did that job for a substantial amount of time got quite good at it. Practicing law may be, in a way, more important, because what you learn in law school is mostly done by reading decisions and opinions and briefs, and anyone can do that. The actual texture and incentives of litigation give you a different kind of insight into how the law works in practice, as opposed to in theory.
What are some of the biggest differences between being a lawyer and being a journalist?
Speed and impact and readership. Getting a 100-page decision and writing something accurate and accessible in a couple of hours is a challenge and a learned skill.
What cases will you be watching in the coming year?
At the Supreme Court, there are four cases I’m following closely: one about whether President Trump’s tariffs programs are lawful, another on whether his attempt to curtail birthright citizenship is constitutional, and two cases about whether he can remove heads of independent agencies generally and, in particular, a Federal Reserve governor named Lisa Cook. All those cases together will give us a sense of whether the Supreme Court, which has so far seemed quite sympathetic to the Trump agenda on its emergency docket, will continue to deliver victories for the administration.
I’ll also be watching all of the turmoil in the lower courts arising mostly from the administration’s immigration policy, which has given rise to endless conflicts.
Which aspects of how the legal system works are often misunderstood?
One thing people don’t always understand is that courts don’t have the power to just wake up one morning and say, I think a better way to do this would be X or Y. They need to decide an actual case in which actual people have a stake, and courts, for the most part, only deal with disputes that are brought to them and in which there’s a concrete disagreement. That means that there may be things that go on in the world that are unlawful or unconstitutional that courts will not immediately, or perhaps ever, resolve.
Have you ever been called for jury duty?
I’ve been called half a dozen times, but I’ve never been placed on a jury. I’ve gotten close, and then one lawyer or the other or the judge has always thought better of it.
Once, it looked like I was going to get put on a jury, and President Barack Obama was about to announce his second Supreme Court nominee. I went up to the judge and said, “I understand that everyone has to serve, but it’d be really bad for me professionally, because there’s probably going to be an announcement tomorrow, and my editors will not be crazy about the idea that I’m on jury duty.” He goes, “Mr. Liptak, I don’t think that’s an excuse.” And he said, “Who’s it going to be?” I said, “I think Elena Kagan.” He goes, “All right.” And he let me go.
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.
The post Why Did the Courts Do That? Let Him Explain. appeared first on New York Times.
