Nina Totenberg
Nina Totenberg is NPR's award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR's critically acclaimed newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.
Totenberg's coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. She is often featured in documentaries — most recently RBG — that deal with issues before the court. As Newsweek put it, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg."
In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage — anchored by Totenberg — of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.
That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, including the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; the Carr Van Anda Award from the Scripps School of Journalism; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.
Totenberg was named Broadcaster of the Year and honored with the 1998 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcasting from the National Press Foundation. She is the first radio journalist to receive the award. She is also the recipient of the American Judicature Society's first-ever award honoring a career body of work in the field of journalism and the law. In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."
Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting and has received more than two dozen honorary degrees. On a lighter note, Esquire magazine twice named her one of the "Women We Love."
A frequent contributor on TV shows, she has also written for major newspapers and periodicals — among them, The New York Times Magazine, The Harvard Law Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and New York Magazine, and others.
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The justice has played a key role on the court, often leading the charge not just on abortion, but for expanded religious rights, against LGBTQ rights, against expanded voting rights, and more -
NPR's Juana Summers talks with Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg, SCOTUS Blog Founder Tom Goldstein and Constitutional law scholar Jamal Greene about this year's historic Supreme Court term.
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In an astounding 62% of the decisions, conservatives prevailed, and more importantly, often prevailed in dramatic ways, according to new data.
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At issue is a legal theory that would give state legislatures unfettered authority to set the rules for federal elections, free of supervision by state courts and state constitutions.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to set limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants.
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The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to mandate carbon emissions from existing power plants.
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One of the most consequential Supreme Court terms in recent memory still has two major cases left on the docket — cases that could alter the political landscape on immigration and the environment.
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Only recently did the court rule that the eastern half of Oklahoma is on tribal land, and that the state could not bring criminal prosecutions there without the consent of the Indian tribes there.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with a high school football coach who claimed the right to pray on the 50-yard line after each game, joined by those players who wanted to participate.
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The 6-to-3 decision is the latest example of the court's conservative supermajority requiring more accommodation for religion in public schools and less separation between church and state.
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The 6-to-3 decision is the latest example of the court's conservative supermajority requiring more accommodation for religion in public schools and less separation between church and state.
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The Supreme Court's abortion decision, along with a ruling on guns earlier in the week, continues the current court's move to the political right.
