Anthony Lewis, a former New York Times reporter and columnist whose work won two Pulitzer Prizes and transformed American legal journalism, died on Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 85.

The cause was complications of renal and heart failure, said his wife, Margaret Marshall, a retired chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Lewis brought passionate engagement to his two great themes: justice and the role of the press in a democracy. His column appeared on the op-ed page of The Times from 1969 to 2001. His voice was liberal, learned, conversational and direct.

Lewis wrote several books, two of them classic accounts of landmark decisions of the Warren court, which he revered. Chief Justice Earl Warren led the Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969, corresponding almost precisely with Lewis’ years in Washington.

One of those books, “Gideon’s Trumpet,” concerned a 1963 decision that guaranteed lawyers to poor defendants charged with serious crimes. It has never been out of print since it was published in 1964.

In 1991, Lewis published “Make No Law,” an account of New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 Supreme Court decision that revolutionized U.S. libel law.

Joseph Anthony Lewis was born in New York City on March 27, 1927. He graduated from Harvard College in 1948.

After that he was hired by The Washington Daily News, a lively afternoon tabloid, and won his first Pulitzer there, in 1955, when he was 28.

Lewis returned to The Times that year, hired by James Reston, the Washington bureau chief, to cover the Justice Department and the Supreme Court.