By his early 30s, Thomas Goldstein has already established himself as a unique whisperer to the halls of power. “No one knew more about the Supreme Court than he did,” said the celebrated lawyer David Boies. His swaggering, risk-friendly approach to litigation had won him enormous influence both as an advocate and through his authoritative blog as a leading public commentator on the justices. Then, in 2023, Goldstein stunned the world of Supreme Court insiders by announcing that he would no longer represent clients before the justices. In public, he attributed the decision to the rightward drift of the court. In fact, over the previous decade-plus, Goldstein had been leading a secret life of ultra-high-stakes gambling and “sugar daddy” relationships with multiple young women — a life so sheltered from those around him that no one knew the full extent of it.
For this week’s print issue, we celebrate the artists, innovators and thinkers we lost in the past year.
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