Art Lien botched his first courtroom assignment. He had graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976—“painting houses and freaking out about what to do with my life”—when he learned WJZ-TV needed a sketch artist to cover Gov. Marvin Mandel’s corruption trial.

He went to the newsroom, drew a few people working at their desks, got sent to a pre-trial Mandel hearing, and was promptly fired after his watercolors ran all over the non-absorbent paper he’d brought.

Desperate to redeem himself, he explained his blunder (the paper worked in the studio but not the courtroom) and offered to tackle another assignment for free. That turned out to be the trial for the killing of Councilman Dominic Leone at City Hall, whose murderer, with the help of soon-to-be legendary Baltimore defense attorney Billy Murphy, was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Courtroom illustration is a dying art, with cameras generally allowed in courtrooms, but the tumultuous ’70s proved the perfect time to break into the niche profession. The Judicial Conference of the United States had formally prohibited cameras from courtrooms while Lien was at MICA.

“I fell into it,” says Lien, who lives in Catonsville and retired this spring after going on to cover the Supreme Court and the nation’s most historic cases for more than 40 years, including the court’s overturning of California’s gay marriage ban in 2013, pictured above.

“After those first trials, I wrote letters to the three networks. At CBS, Howard Brody, who’d covered World War II and everything since [including the trial of the Chicago 7 and the Watergate hearings], I guess he was getting tired of doing it, and I tried out. Howard was wonderful. He took me to the Supreme Court and the Senate.”

The Supreme Court is one place cameras are still not allowed. In the early days, Lien occasionally spotted justices having breakfast in the court’s dining hall.

“You’d see Harry Blackmun there, who wrote the Roe v. Wade decision,” Lien recalls, referencing the landmark decision that was just overturned. “There was no metal detector and security was relaxed. Today, there’s a fence around the entire building. A different time in every way. John Paul Stevens was a junior justice when I started and one of the more conservative justices. By the time he retired in 2010, he was one of most liberal justices.”

Lien obviously had a unique front row seat to history, but remains modest about his career. His mother, he maintains, was the real journalism star in the family.

“She was a groundbreaking international economics reporter and wrote a column for Le Monde in Paris under a pseudonym,” he says. “She was way more interesting than me.”

For the most part, his interactions with the justices were limited to observing them query lawyers during cases. Baltimore’s renowned Justice Thurgood Marshall, for example, in step with his irascible reputation, did not suffer fools and could get testy in court. Lien also remembers Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was still driving herself to work at the time, coming to the press room and complaining about D.C. drivers.

Former Justice William Brennan, the son of Irish immigrants, approached Lien directly once—during a gallery showing of the court’s sketch artists’ work. “He’s looking at my sketch, and I’m next to him, and he said, ‘You made me look like a leprechaun.’ The funny thing is, he was short and you only saw his head peering over the bench and he did kind of look like a leprechaun.”

The most indelible trials Lien covered were not in the Supreme Court, however, but in Oklahoma City after the Timothy McVeigh bombing, in Boston after the marathon bombing, and in Texas following the gruesome, racist murder of James Byrd Jr., who was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck by three white men in 1998. “The testimony of the survivors and families is really hard,” says Lien, who also covered the trials of the police officers who were charged in the death of Freddie Gray.

Ultimately, after working remotely during COVID, Lien realized he didn’t want to commute to Washington anymore. At the moment, he has no plans to pull together a book of illustrations or start any new art projects. Recently, he even turned down a commission from the clerks of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Instead, he’s looking forward to restoring a couple of vintage Holdsworth and Raleigh bicycles in his garage.

“After 45 years,” he says, with a happy but weary chuckle, “I don’t want to draw right now.”

On Saturday, in one of the slimmest votes in American history of 50-48, Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States amid controversial sexual misconduct claims from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. He was sworn in promptly after the vote by both Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy—whom he is replacing—in a private ceremony.

This is considered a major victory for the Trump administration and Senate Republican leaders who have made stockpiling conservative judges a signature issue. At 53, Kavanaugh is young enough to serve on the Supreme Court for decades if not more.

“I applaud and congratulate the U.S. Senate for confirming our GREAT NOMINEE, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to the United States Supreme Court,” President Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon. “Later today, I will sign his Commission of Appointment, and he will be officially sworn in. Very exciting!”

Maryland officials were not pleased with Kavanaugh’s confirmation and made their grievances known on social media:

Senator Chris Van Hollen, who voted no to the confirmation, believes that the allegations against Kavanaugh should have prevented him from obtaining the seat on the high court.

Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous also expressed his opposition to the confirmation.

Officials on the other side of the aisle were pleased with the decision to vote him in.

Before the vote, Governor Larry Hogan declined to say whether he would confirm Kavanaugh if he were a senator.

“I’m glad that actually happened, that there was an FBI investigation,” Hogan told The Sun. “I have frankly no involvement in that. I’ve never taken any position on any Supreme Court nominee. I’m not qualified to make those decisions. I’m not a member of the Senate. I haven’t seen the report. I haven’t watched the testimony. I’m working 15, 18 hours a day, seven days a week. I’m not sitting home watching television. I’ve followed what’s happening, but I don’t feel educated enough to make that decision.”

President Donald Trump nominated judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy following his retirement at the end of the month. Kavanaugh, an appellate courts judge in Washington, D.C., who worked in George W. Bush’s White House, will be Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee since taking office.

“In keeping with President Reagan’s legacy, I do not ask about a nominee’s personal opinions,” Trump said in the announcement. “What matters is not a judge’s political views but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the Constitution require. I am pleased to say that I have found, without doubt, such a person.”

While many may not have heard of him until yesterday, here is some background on the latest Supreme Court Justice nominee, who is a native of Bethesda:

Kavanaugh has decades of experience as a federal judge.
After graduating from Yale Law School, he was plunged into politics when he was charged with investigating President Bill Clinton’s deputy counsel Vincent Foster. He also later laid the groundwork for impeaching Clinton following the president’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

In December 2000, with the presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush undecided, Kavanaugh joined the Republican legal team that won the fight to stop the ballot recount in Florida. He was then nominated in 2003 by President George W. Bush to the appeals court and was confirmed in 2006. Since then, he has written nearly 300 opinions and has taken stances on several Obama-era environmental regulations including efforts to limit greenhouse gases and hazardous air pollutants.

He describes his judicial philosophy as “straightforward.”
Kavanaugh has said in the past that he does not believe that there is a such thing as Democratic or Republican judges. He believes that there is only one kind of judge under the constitution.

“A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law,” Kavanaugh said. “A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.”

He portrays himself as an advocate for women.
The judge spoke at length about his wife and two daughters, even mentioning that it was his mother who first introduced him to law. These comments are particularly examined because his nomination is expected to center around his views on abortion and access to contraception.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are prepared to rally in defense of Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights decision. They also fear that LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage could be overturned by the court with Kavanaugh’s nomination. But, it is unclear how soon those decisions will be made.

Kavanaugh once worked for his predecessor.
He clerked for Kennedy on the Supreme Court in the early 1990s alongside Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court pick. Although Kavanaugh is a protégé of Kennedy, he is more conservative and may not share his views on cases regarding civil and women’s rights.

His history in D.C. will provide the opposition with ammunition to deny his appointment. Last fall, Kavanaugh ruled against an immigrant teenager in federal custody who sought to terminate her pregnancy. But he did not go as far as another D.C. Circuit judge who said the teen had no constitutional right to an elective abortion.

He values family, church, and basketball.
Kavanaugh grew up in Bethesda and attended Georgetown Preparatory School, the same Jesuit high school as Gorsuch. He is an observant Catholic, regularly attending church at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Northwest D.C.

He met his wife, Ashley, while they were both working at the White House under President Bush. The couple has two daughters together and Kavanaugh has coached their basketball teams for the past seven years. Following President Trump’s announcement, Kavanaugh event cracked a joke about Duke’s men basketball coach Mike Kryzyzewski.

“I have two spirited daughters,” he said. “Margaret loves sports and she loves to read. Liza loves sports and she loves to talk . . . The girls on the [basketball] team call me Coach K.”