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 court ruled that immigrants, even those who are permanent legal residents and asylum seekers, have no right to periodic bond hearings, meaning they could be held indefinitely in some cases. -
The Supreme Court will decide whether a U.S. warrant can compel Microsoft to turn over a user's emails stored in Ireland. It also seems to want Congress to fix the dilemma. -
The Curious Case Of A Florida Man Who Called Politicians Corrupt, Got Thrown In JailFane Lozman's second trip to the U.S. Supreme Court could have far-reaching implications for freedom of speech. -
Conservative justices could overrule a 40-year-old decision allowing states to compel union fee payments. But all eyes are on Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was uncharacteristically silent in court Monday. -
The court, continuing a pattern of nonintervention, has turned away a constitutional challenge to a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas angrily dissented. -
On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declared it will not get in the way of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court order that will require the state legislature to redraw its congressional map by Feb. 15.
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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat down with NPR's Nina Totenberg at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday where she discussed her thoughts on the #MeToo movement.
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The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case in which the defendant's lawyer told the jury he was guilty over the defendant's explicit objection. -
In Supreme Court arguments on Wednesday, the justices appeared divided over whether Ohio's so called "use-it or lose-it" voter registration rule violates federal law. The state has one of the nation's most aggressive voter-purge systems in the country.
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The justices heard a challenge to an Ohio law, which allows the purging of voter registrations because of a failure to vote in two consecutive elections.
