Build a news timeline: the Dobbs opinion

What to take away

A news timeline is not a stack of headlines. It is a controlled record of events in sequence. Done well, it exposes gaps, prevents time errors, and lets a reader enter a complicated story without reading every earlier article. A story built on alerts follows the same date discipline; see how to read an emergency alert.

The public version should be concise. The reporting version should retain source details, conflicts, and revision history.

This guide uses Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization as a worked example. The case challenged Mississippi's Gestational Age Act, and the Supreme Court's final opinion overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Before the final opinion, the leaked draft was not the Court's final ruling.

A timeline usually serves a larger live file. The guide to covering developing news stories shows where the chronology sits among the other components.

Step 1: define the timeline's question

Write one sentence stating what the chronology must explain. Examples include: "How did the evacuation order expand?" and "Which decisions led to the court hearing?" For the worked example, ask when the Dobbs draft was dated, when it became public, and when the Court issued its final opinion. A broad subject produces a crowded list, while a question gives editors a reason to include or exclude each event.

For a litigation chronology, follow the stages in the court reporting guide, because filings, hearings, and rulings carry different statuses.

Also set boundaries:

Step 2: create a private event ledger

Use one row per event. Do not draft elegant prose yet.

If the event time is a range, store the range. If only a date is known, do not invent a clock time to make the table sort neatly.

Step 3: normalize time without hiding local meaning

Keep the original time from the source and add a normalized time for sorting. For a local public-safety story, show local time to readers. For an international sequence, a consistent reference zone may help, but the displayed entry should still name the zone.

Daylight saving status belongs in the record too. NIST's page on United States daylight saving time rules says the Department of Transportation, not NIST, regulates time zones and daylight time.

DST runs from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November. It is not observed in most of Arizona, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. A bare clock time near a boundary can be an hour off.

Avoid "today," "last night," and "hours earlier" in durable timeline entries. Those phrases become unclear when an article is read later or republished elsewhere.

Step 4: separate event order from publication order

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case gives a concrete example. A leaked draft opinion was dated February 10, 2022; Politico published it on May 2, 2022. The Supreme Court issued its final opinion on June 24, 2022. Put those in separate entries: the draft's date is not the date it became public, and a draft is not a final ruling.

Those are two times, not one, and the method for reading an official document makes this separation a habit, recording document date, version, and access date as separate fields.

This distinction can change interpretation. It may show what decision-makers knew at a given point or why an earlier report lacked a later fact. In the Dobbs case, the published draft showed proposed reasoning, not the Court's final ruling; the final opinion resolved that uncertainty.

Step 5: test dependencies

For every claimed cause or consequence, ask whether the chronology alone proves the connection. Sequence is necessary for causation, but it is not sufficient. Event B occurring after Event A does not establish that A caused B.

Use restrained wording:

The same restraint governs numbers. The guide to reporting statistics and polls keeps association and causation apart when two measures move together.

Step 6: edit for the public version

Choose entries that change the reader's understanding. Merge repetitive procedural notices only when no meaning is lost. Give each entry a date, a compact statement, and attribution where the fact is contested or not independently established; public records reporting shows how to trace the source.

The Dobbs case also shows why a public timeline should distinguish document, publication, and decision. The leaked draft is a document event; Politico's release is the public reporting event; the Supreme Court's final opinion is the official decision. Keep all three entries separately sourced, and identify the draft as preliminary.

The finished Dobbs timeline

Here is the ledger from the steps above, edited into a public version. Each entry carries a date, a source and a status.

The last two entries are why the draft stays labeled preliminary until the Court's own statement and opinion arrive.

Step 7: maintain a change log

When evidence changes an entry, keep three things:

The public correction should identify the affected fact. "This timeline was updated" is not enough if the earlier version gave the wrong date or sequence. The context checklist for developing stories makes this update-and-correction pass a standing step.

Quality checks

Common questions

Should the newest event appear first?

A reverse-chronological feed helps repeat visitors find updates. A background timeline is usually easier to understand from earliest to latest. Label the order.

What if two sources give different times?

Record both in the private ledger, seek the underlying record, and explain the conflict if it affects the public account.

Can a quotation be a timeline entry?

Only when the statement itself is an event that matters. Otherwise, summarize the event and use the quotation as support.

How long should each entry be?

Use enough words to identify the action, actor, and significance. Move extended explanation into a background note rather than packing it into every row.