Adam Liptak (born September 2, 1960) is an American journalist, lawyer and instructor in law and journalism.[1] He is the Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent for The New York Times.[2]
In 1992, he returned to The New York Times Company's legal department. Liptak spent a decade advising The New York Times and the company's other newspapers, television stations and new media properties on defamation, privacy, news gathering and related issues and frequently litigated media and commercial cases.[1]
Career
Liptak joined The New York Times news staff in 2002 as its national legal correspondent. He covered the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito; the investigation into the disclosure of the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover Central Intelligence Agency operative; the trial of John Lee Malvo, one of the Washington-area snipers; judicial ethics; and various aspects of the criminal justice system,[5] including capital punishment.[6] He inaugurated the Sidebar column in January 2007.[1] The column covered and considered developments in the law until its final edition, published Feb. 2, 2026.[7]
In 2005, he examined the rise in life sentences in the U.S. in a three-part series.[8] The next year, Liptak and two colleagues studied connections between contributions to the campaigns of justices on the Ohio Supreme Court and those justices' voting records.[9] He was a member of the teams that examined the reporting of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller at The New York Times, in 2003 and 2005, respectively.[10][11]
He began covering the Supreme Court in 2008. He followed Linda Greenhouse, who had covered the Supreme Court for nearly 30 years.[1] In February 2026, he left his role as Supreme Court Correspondent to become The Times' Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent.[12] He now writes a New York Times newsletter, The Docket.
Liptak has served as the chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s communications and media law committee and was a member of the board of the Media Law Resource Center.[6]
In 1995, Presstime magazine named him one of 20 leading newspaper professionals under the age of 40.[6] In 1999, he received the New York Press Club's John Peter Zenger award for "defending and advancing the cause of a free press".[20] In 2006, the same group awarded him its Crystal Gavel award for his journalistic work.[21]
