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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This Supreme Court Case Could Radically Reshape PoliticsWisconsin Republicans lost the 2012 election overall but won 60 percent of the legislative seats. They did it through extreme partisan gerrymandering. The court will weigh how far is too far. -
Up first for the high court's new term: a case about nonunion employees' right to take action against alleged illegality by their employer. -
The Supreme Court is back to its full complement of nine justices and will consider issues of religion and discrimination, technology and political fairness, and the rights of unionized workers.
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Antonin Scalia's Less Well-Known Legacy: His SpeechesScalia Speaks is an anthology of the late justice's speeches on everything from the arts, turkey hunting, games and sports, faith and judging — and even the "Italian view of the Irish." -
The Supreme Court will hear a case this week that could have repercussions on how politicians are elected throughout the country.
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Supreme Court To Open A Whirlwind TermIn a term one justice predicts will be "monumental," the issues range from politics to privacy, and from same-sex anti-discrimination law to sports betting. -
The Trump administration is considering new travel restrictions as its controversial travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries expires.
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Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case that required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages, has died at 88.
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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the administration was too strict in its list of relatives of citizens and legal residents who are allowed to enter the U.S. from six mainly Muslim countries -
The Senate Judiciary Committee heard from some of President Trump's judicial nominees Wednesday, including two controversial appeals court nominees.
