American Foundation for Equal Rights

Covering History: A Q&A with The Recorder’s Prop 8 Courtroom Reporter

Like much of the rest of the country, we’ve been keeping a watch on the Proposition 8 same-sex marriage trial in San Francisco. But we’ve got nothing on Dan Levine, who’s been covering the case as closely as Cling Wrap for our sibling publication The Recorder. Levine’s been filing terrific daily stories on the trial and tweeting minute-by-minute courtroom developments at Twitter. We caught up with him during a break in the action Friday.

Litigation Daily: Hi Dan. We were hoping you could give us the reporter’s notebook version of the scene inside the courtroom this past week. Let’s start with David Boies. From your story, it sounds like he got revved up when Dr. Hak-Shing William Tam, one of Prop 8′s most vociferous proponents, took the stand Thursday. What has been your read on Boies so far in this trial?

Levine: I felt like [the Tam examination] was the first instance that we really saw him display why he’s David Boies. He had done a direct before, but hadn’t been up there that much. That goes for the other name principals [also]. Since the first day, the associates and junior partners have so far been carrying the bulk of the work. Boies was very strong. Many times we saw him lull the witness into acknowledging certain facts, then use those facts against him. He was effective at laying traps and capitalizing on them.

Read the rest of Ben Hallman’s interview with Dan Levine here.