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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In a case that pitted the right to know against the right of free speech, the court ruled 5-4 that a California law aimed at "truth in advertising" likely violates the First Amendment. -
By a 5-4 vote, the court reversed a series of lower court decisions and said a rule banning nearly all travelers from five mainly Muslim countries was within the president's authority. -
The Supreme Court again weighed in on gerrymandering Monday, this time ruling that Texas' political map passes muster, except for one legislative district that was ruled unconstitutional.
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In a ruling seen as a major victory for privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court this morning has ruled that police need a search warrant to track people through cell-phone tower searches.
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The sharply divided justices ruled that police need a search warrant to obtain cellphone location data. -
NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg discusses what the Supreme Court's ruling on online shopping means for sellers and state revenues.
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States will reap billions after a major ruling that says states may now impose sales taxes on Internet retailers, even ones out of state and with no physical presence in the state. -
The Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering, but it sent the cases back down to lower courts for challengers to make new arguments.
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NPR's Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg discusses the implications of Monday's Supreme Court decision on partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin and Maryland.
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The court on Monday, in twin partisan gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin and Maryland, said either that challengers didn't have standing or didn't weigh in on the merits of the case.
