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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Forty-one Democrats have committed to support a filibuster on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, which means the vote will fall short of a 60-vote threshold, likely forcing a rules change by Republicans. -
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down as unconstitutional the standards used by the state of Texas to determine whether a convicted murderer is mentally deficient and thus may not be executed.
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Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday he would support a filibuster to block Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. After two days before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gorsuch appeared to win no Democratic support. Republicans don't need any Democratic votes to confirm Gorsuch, but they may need eight to block a filibuster.
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The Senate Democratic leader says Judge Gorsuch is not independent of President Trump.
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Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch faced another round of questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee in day three of his confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
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Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch answered questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for more than 10 hours on Tuesday. Gorsuch says he will be an independent voice on the court.
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Neil Gorsuch faced hours of questions from senators trying to get him to reveal his judicial philosophy. Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog talks about what it was like inside the hearing room on Tuesday.
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Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch appears before the Senate for day one of his confirmation hearing on Monday. Gorsuch has been nominated to fill the spot on the court left vacant since the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative, 13 months ago.
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Judge Neil Gorsuch has said deferring to agencies is an abdication of judicial responsibility. He is expected to be grilled on this at Monday's confirmation hearings. -
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch ruled on the Hobby Lobby case before it reached the high court. His concurrence argued religious freedom could extend even further than the Supreme Court ruled.
