Stuart Taylor Jr.
Stuart Taylor Jr. is an American journalist and author. He also served as a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and practices law occasionally. He was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun from 1971-1974; The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court; wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010; and has written on a freelance basis for numerous publications both before and since 2010. He has also coauthored two books and he and a coauthor will soon publish a third.
Career
Taylor comments on legal affairs and political issues and often focuses on the Supreme Court, appearing frequently in other publications such as The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal. He also does numerous radio interviews and has been interviewed on all major television news programs. Taylor graduated in 1970 from Princeton University and in 1977 from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude. He was an associate from 1977-1980 at the D.C. law firm of WilmerHale.
Literary work
Taylor has written about a very wide range of issues, from what he calls a generally moderate ideological orientation. A random sampling: “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,”[1] Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign,[2] and the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case.[3] He has argued for reform of the Voting Rights Act,[4] has defended Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito from charges of being a “far-right activist,”[5] and has written and commented about the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court[6] and about Obamacare.,[7][8]
Taylor wrote in The Atlantic in 2005 that despite all the debates over the Supreme Court's ideological, ethnic, and gender “balance,” “there is likely to be little discussion about the greatest imbalance—the one in the collective real-world experience of its justices. The Court's steady homogenization by professional background has gone largely unremarked.”[9] He wrote in The Atlantic in 2011 that prosecutors in the rape case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn didn't “have a viable criminal case,” but “the hotel maid should still get her day in civil court.”[10]
Books
He is the co-author, with Professor K.C. Johnson of Brooklyn College, of Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustice of the Duke Lacrosse Case (ISBN 0-312-36912-3). It was published in September 2007. In the book, Johnson and Taylor recount in detail the entire story of the Duke lacrosse case, and explore some of its lessons as regards, for example, the reliability of prosecutors, the trustworthiness of the media, and the role of extreme political ideology in the academy. The New York Times Sunday Book Review, referred to the book as a “riveting narrative” and stated that “Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford.”[11] In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor coauthored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. Judge Richard A. Posner wrote: "This lucid, data-rich book is simply the best researched and most convincing analysis ever done of affirmative action in higher education, a work at once impeccably scholarly and entirely accessible to anyone interested in the social and legal ramifications of well-intentioned policies that, as the authors show, have a boomerang effect on the intended beneficiaries."
References
- ↑ "The Twilight of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'". Newsweek. Sep 13, 2010. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Honesty Hillary's glass house". Union Tribune San Diego. December 23, 2007. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "The End of Restraint". Newsweek. Jan 21, 2010. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Times Have Changed: Civil-Rights Era Voting Law Needs Reform". The Atlantic. Mar 23, 2012. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Alito is neither far right nor activist". Union Tribune San Diego. November 6, 2005. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Graham, the Gentleman, at Kagan Hearings". Newsweek. Jun 29, 2010. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Analysis: The Long Road To A Supreme Court Decision On Health Law's Mandate". KHN. Dec 19, 2010. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Analysis: What Does Judge Vinson's Health Law Decision Mean?". KHN. Jan 31, 2011. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Remote Control". The Atlantic. September 2005. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Drop the DSK Charges". The Atlantic. Aug 8, 2011. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ↑ "Wrongly Accused, New York Times Sunday Book Review". New York Times. September 16, 2007. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
External links
- Stuart Taylor Jr. Official Website Archive of Stuart's writings dating back to the early 1980s
- Brookings Scholar Stuart Taylor Jr. Professional biography.
- Archive of articles written for The New York Times
- Essays Written For The Atlantic
- Investigating The Investigators Panel discussion discuss investigations of involving former Independent Counsel Ken Starr.
- "Guilty in the Duke Case" with KC Johnson, The Washington Post, September 7, 2007
- Alan Dershowitz's five best books about important legal cases
- Appearances on C-SPAN