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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Police Shootings Stir Outrage Among Some, But Not The Supreme CourtThe Supreme Court sided with police on Monday when it tossed out a lawsuit against a policeman after he shot a woman in her own front yard.
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The Supreme Court justices seemed frustrated by the problem of partisan gerrymandering in arguments Wednesday — and what to do about it.
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Justices heard a case involving redistricting for the second time this term. This time, it was Democrats' turn to defend their plan.
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A Supreme Court case undone? The CLOUD Act, recently passed in the omnibus spending bill, is likely to moot one of the term's blockbuster cases. -
Unlike Much Of The Rest Of Washington, The Supreme Court Is No SnowflakeWhile the snow accumulated outside, the Supreme Court was in session Wednesday. Historically, the justices are no flakes when it comes to snow. -
Supreme Court justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum expressed skepticism about California's "truth-in-advertising" law requiring anti-abortion clinics to more fully disclose what they are.
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Justices Appear Skeptical Of Calif. Law Challenged By Anti-Abortion CentersThe high court heard arguments on whether anti-abortion pregnancy centers, which can often appear to be abortion clinics, have to disclose more fully what they are, as required by California law. -
Where The Supreme Court Stands On Gun LawsThe Supreme Court has weighed in on relatively few gun-related cases. We look at why.
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Polling places are politics-free zones. Could that change with a Supreme Court case out of Minnesota? The Supreme Court heard arguments in a key case Wednesday.
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Should Polling Places Remain Politics-Free? Justices Incredulous At Both SidesPolling places are a politics-free zone. Could that change with a Supreme Court case out of Minnesota? The court is hearing arguments in a key case on this Wednesday.
