Covering the Final, Chaotic Days of the Supreme Court Term

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Immunity for former presidents. Jan. 6 obstruction charges. The rights of social media platforms. These are just a few of the major cases the Supreme Court has yet to tackle as its momentous term nears its end.

Whenever the rulings come down, Abbie VanSickle will be ready for them. As a reporter covering the Supreme Court, she has been busy breaking down recent rulings in blockbuster cases, including those related to opioids and abortion, for readers of The New York Times. Ms. VanSickle, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, joined The Times last year. Working alongside Adam Liptak, who has reported on the Supreme Court since 2008, she writes about the world of the court and about the justices and lawyers who work in it.

Opinions in the most contentious cases are generally announced in the term’s final days. In a recent interview, Ms. VanSickle talked about the past week of decisions, the challenges of her beat and how she prepared for the term’s end. This interview has been edited and condensed.

The Supreme Court generally wraps its term by the end of June or early July and saves its most dramatic cases for last. What has your past week looked like?

The decisions come every few minutes, depending on how long it takes the justices to announce them from the bench. Once I hear the opinion, I begin writing immediately, to quickly get something up. Then, I spend the day layering on top of it. First, you might only get the vote count, which side won and if anybody dissented. Maybe the next go-round, you have the analysis of the majority opinion and the dissent. And the next go-round, you have the reactions from people involved in the case and organizations that have a stake.

How do you prepare to report on the different cases?

I spend months prepping by going through things like oral arguments, understanding the cases, reading the briefs and interviewing the people who are involved directly in the cases. I try to get as deep into the cases as possible, so that I really know the players. But they are all totally different. You’re shifting into different terrain each time. You don’t know when decisions are coming. The last ones left are the cases likely to be contentious or that will cause some strong dissents. Those are often the thorniest cases.

How do you keep the cases straight?

Your brain shifts for each case. I try to think of all the possible scenarios — “OK, they upheld this,” or “They ruled against this,” or “It was a splintered decision” — and game out the options. But it’s very difficult because we don’t know when the cases are coming. Some cases are easier to predict. For many of the biggest cases, it’s not as simple to explain or predict what the legal analysis will be, even if you guess the decision. The way that the justices get there is not always clear.

How challenging is it to translate the legalese of the decisions?

It’s one of the most important and one of the most difficult parts of the beat. Trying to translate a 100-something-page opinion into something that distills for Times readers what this means for the country and their own lives weighs on me a lot. I try to make it as clear as possible. Some of the cases are easier than others to explain “this is how this plays out in your life.”

You previously worked as an investigative reporter for The Marshall Project, which focuses on the criminal justice system. How does your current role compare with your previous one?

At The Marshall Project, I often spent about a year on my stories. The similarity is that I was trying to understand institutions that were not always transparent and didn’t love opening themselves to journalists. The Supreme Court also has traditionally not been transparent. The deliberations by the justices are secret. Much of the work of the court is done behind closed doors. Even the public records available for many government entities are often not easy to get.

How has your previous reporting experience prepared you?

Adam Liptak has been super helpful. I could not think of a better colleague to work with.

The most useful experience was when I was a breaking news reporter straight out of college. I never knew what the day was going to bring, and I had to go quickly and accurately toward whatever it was — a fire, a crime scene, a court case. That’s something I pull from quite a lot. Also, stay calm. You never know what’s going to hit you. You just have to be prepared. It’s a great beat, but a bit of a crazy one.

So it’s a fun job?

I love it. It’s just fascinating. Pretty much all of the cases that get to the Supreme Court are interesting. Each case has people behind it who have been focused on the case’s particular issue for years. So whatever you’re writing about, you have people who are experts on that area, like a bankruptcy mechanism, or part of the tax code, or something that’s more of a social issue. You really feel the weight of the cases.