About Stuart Taylor, Jr

Stuart Taylor, Jr. is an author and freelance journalist focusing on legal and policy issues, a Brookings Institution nonresident senior fellow, and a National Journal contributing editor. He teaches “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School and practices law on occasion. He has covered the Supreme Court and other matters for National Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, The American Lawyer, Legal Times, Atlantic.com, and other publications, winning various journalism awards, and has appeared on all major television and radio networks.

He has recently coauthored with Richard Sander an important new book on affirmative action, with an October 9, 2012 publication date, published by Basic Books and titled Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. Taylor also filed with Sander an amicus curiae brief in a pending Supreme Court affirmative action case. He previously coauthored with KC Johnson a critically acclaimed 2007 book, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Taylor has also contributed essays to other books. His email is StuartTaylorJr@gmail.com [1]. His website is http://stuarttaylorjr.com [2].

Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, serving as a note editor for the Harvard Law Review and graduating in 1977 with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, which he used to travel around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.

Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering from 1978-1980. He joined the New York Times Washington Bureau in 1980, covering legal affairs from 1980-1985 and the Supreme Court from 1985-1988. Since then he has written commentary and in-depth magazine articles from 1989-1997 for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates; a weekly opinion column from 1998 until June 2010 for National Journal; and numerous articles since 1998 as a Newsweek contributing editor. He has also written for The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, and other magazines as well as occasional commentaries for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times.

Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; a 1988 New York Times nomination for a Pulitzer Prize for Supreme Court coverage; a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and won the 1991 Golden Quill Award for Excellence in Editorial Writing.

Among those who have praised Mismatch are Judge Richard Posner ("the best researched and most convincing analysis ever done of affirmative action in higher education") and columnists George Will ("This book probably will make constitutional history") and Clarence Page (this book has "caused me to think again" about the affirmative action mismatch problem).

Taylor and his wife, Sally Lamar Ellis, live in Washington. They have two daughters. He is 64.