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 high court on Thursday struck down Minnesota's broad ban on "political" apparel inside polling places. But justices said similar, more narrowly written laws in other states are likely fine. -
On Wednesday, the Legislative and Judicial branches of the federal government clashed over who should direct how one body deals with sexual harassment complaints. -
A divided Supreme Court has ruled that Ohio is allowed to purge voters from the rolls based on inactivity. The decision could have implications for several states.
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The Supreme Court upheld the most aggressive voter-purge law in the country. If a voter doesn't respond to mailings or hasn't voted in two consecutive elections, they are kicked off the rolls. -
The Quiet Rage Of Mazie HironoThe Hawaii senator is the chamber's only immigrant. The Democrat, who asks every nominee whether they've ever been accused of sexual misconduct, has a passion belied by her cool affect. -
The Justices threw out a lower court order allowing an undocumented immigrant in U.S. custody to get an abortion. And they ruled in favor of baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
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The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a local baker in Colorado was within his rights to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding, but it did not go beyond this case. -
The Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal to a restrictive abortion law in Arkansas that would effectively ban abortions by medication. But this is hardly the end of the line for this case.
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Clinics in Arkansas began canceling medical abortions Tuesday. The law, which heavily restricts abortion by medication, is threatening two of the state's three facilities that perform abortions. -
The Supreme Court reversed a conviction that came after an officer looked at a motorcycle under a tarp outside a private residence — without a warrant.
