Fireside
Chat Speaker
Lincoln Caplan '68
Journalist/Founding Editor of Legal Affairs Magazine
New
Haven, CT on May 3, 2006
 Lincoln
Caplan '68 is the Knight Senior Journalist at Yale
Law School. He has taught nonfiction writing there
and in the English Department of Yale University
and served on the advisory board of Yale’s
Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. He is also the
founding editor and president of Legal Affairs,
which was launched in 2002 in association with
Yale Law School, became fully independent in 2004,
and was published for four years until the print
edition was recently suspended.
The Chicago Tribune included Legal
Affairs on the paper’s list of the
country’s “best magazines” and The
Washington Post called it “America’s
most interesting legal magazine.” It has
won a range of awards, including the Casey Medal
for Meritorious Journalism in 2005, Ozzie Awards
for best use of illustration in 2005 and 2004,
and a National Headliner Award for feature writing
in 2003. In 2006, it is a finalist for two National
Magazine Awards, in the general excellence category
for magazines with circulations under 100,000
and in the public interest category for work
shedding new light on an issue of public importance.
The magazine continues as a website at www.legalaffairs.org.
Lincoln Caplan is the author of five books: Up
Against the Law: Affirmative Action and the Supreme
Court (1997, the Century Foundation), which
made an argument similar to the one adopted by
the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2003 landmark decision
upholding the admissions program at the University
of Michigan Law School; Skadden: Power, Money,
and the Rise of a Legal Empire (1993, Farrar
Straus & Giroux), which New York magazine
called “superb journalism, elegantly written,
brimming with insight and wit”; An
Open Adoption (1990, FSG), described by
Albert Solnit, M.D, of Yale Medical School, as “astute
... highly readable ... most knowledgeable”; The
Tenth Justice: The Solicitor General and the
Rule of Law (1987, Knopf), hailed by Anthony
Lewis of The New York Times as “a
fascinating study of law at work in Washington,
D.C.”; and The Insanity Defense and
the Trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr. (1984,
Godine), which the Times called an “eloquent
exposition.”
He has also written for The New Yorker,
for which he was a staff writer; The New Republic,
for which he was a staff writer and a member of
the corporate board; and many other newspapers
and magazines. In addition to legal issues, Caplan
has covered architecture, business, economics,
jazz, sports, and other topics. From 1996 to 1998,
he was an editor at U.S. News & World Report,
where he supervised U.S. News Online and the magazine’s
special projects. Mr. Caplan's writing has earned
a range of awards. They include a Guggenheim Fellowship
for exceptional capacity for productive scholarship
and creative ability in the arts; a Pope Foundation
Award for outstanding accomplishments in investigative
journalism; and a Silver Gavel Award from the American
Bar Association for outstanding public service.
The American Bar Association Journal observed that
he has “few peers in writing about law and
lawyers.”
He is a member of the advisory board of the Pew
Internet & American Life Project in Washington,
D.C.; a trustee of Hopkins School in New Haven,
Connecticut; and a fellow of Yale’s Davenport
College.
Mr. Caplan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard
College in 1972, attended Cambridge University
in England as a Harvard Scholar, and received his
J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1976. He clerked
for the chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme
Court, worked as a management consultant for The
Boston Consulting Group, Inc., and served as a
White House Fellow.
He lives with his wife, Susan L. Carney, who is
Deputy General Counsel of Yale University, and
their daughter, Molly, in Hamden, Connecticut.
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