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.
-
The Supreme Court has concluded oral arguments for this year's term, which featured remote sessions and a new justice.
-
At issue is whether schools may punish students for speech that occurs online and off-campus but may affect school order. The case is the biggest test of student speech rights since 1969.
-
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a First Amendment case that involved a teenager suspended from her cheerleading squad for using profanities on Snapchat.
-
At issue is whether schools can punish students for off-campus speech. At the center of the case is a teenager suspended from her cheerleading team after using a vulgarity on Snapchat.
-
The Supreme Court says it will hear arguments next term in a major gun rights case. It will be the first time it has waded into the issue in more than 10 years.
-
The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving the anonymity of big-money donors to nonprofits. The justices also agreed to hear a major gun-rights case next term.
-
At issue is how much the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to carry concealed weapons outside their home for self-defense. The case will likely be argued in the fall. -
At issue is a California law that requires tax-exempt charities to file with the state a list of their large donors — a copy, in fact, of the list they file annually with the IRS.
-
The court's conservatives said that a judge need not make a finding of "permanent incorrigibility" before sentencing a juvenile offender to life without parole.
-
Friday's announcement comes amid a debate over the composition of the nine-member court that now has a 6-3 conservative majority.
-
Players contend the NCAA is operating a classic conspiracy to fix prices in the labor market. The NCAA maintains that expanding benefits would threaten "amateurism."
-
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case testing whether the NCAA's limits on compensation for student athletes violate the nation's antitrust laws.
