Post Date: May 15, 2006
Pulitzer prize winning legal writer Linda Greenhouse will be the 2006 Class Day speaker at Harvard Law School. The Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, Greenhouse will address graduating students and their families on Wednesday, June 7, as part of Class Day exercises.
Greenhouse has been on the Times staff since 1978, where she has covered the Supreme Court for all but two years of her tenure. (She covered a term of Congress in the mid 1980s.) She is known for distilling even the most complex legal ideas and Court decisions into concise language understandable by mainstream readers.
“Ms. Greenhouse is a wonderful choice for class day speaker, as she brings a wealth of knowledge and insight into the workings of the Supreme Court,” said Jessica Tuchinsky, a 2006 class marshal. “For those of us who’ve spent the last three years analyzing the Court’s decisions, her remarks will be the perfect way to end our law school experience.”
In 2005, Greenhouse published her first book: Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey. (Blackmun was a 1932 Harvard Law graduate.)
In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, Greenhouse has been awarded the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Kennedy School of Government, and the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of Radcliffe College and a master of studies program at Yale Law School.
Recent Class Day speakers at HLS include CNN talkshow host Larry King, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales ’82 (now the U.S. attorney general) and former presidential adviser David Gergen ’67.