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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Notice of the suit was sent to Sudan's U.S. Embassy instead of to its capital. The administration told the Supreme Court that it agrees with Sudan, which is accused of backing the Cole attackers. -
Republicans are holding judicial confirmation hearings with the Senate in recess, while Democrats are opposed.
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Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is stepping back from public life, announcing Tuesday that she was diagnosed with "the beginning stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer's disease."
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O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, says she has been diagnosed with "the beginning stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer's disease." -
When the FBI recovered virtuoso violinist Roman Totenberg's stolen Stradivarius after his death, his daughters wanted the instrument to be played everywhere. Ensuring that was not so simple. -
With the start of a new Supreme Court term and a new justice confirmed, we look at what we can expect from the country's highest court in the months ahead.
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The partisanship and bitterness of the last few weeks have also resonated across the street from the Capitol, at the Supreme Court. What will be the impact on the justices?
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In 1985, Vernon Madison shot and killed a police officer who had been assigned to protect his girlfriend. His severe dementia presents a moral and constitutional dilemma for the Supreme Court. -
The Supreme Court has ruled that a convicted killer has to have a "rational understanding" of why they're being executed. But what of someone with dementia, who doesn't remember even committing the crime?
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The Supreme Court's new term began Monday with just eight justices as the fight over Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination continues.
