
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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A federal appeals court heard oral arguments Tuesday on whether or not to lift a temporary restraining order on President Trump's immigration ban. The order was halted by a lower court last Friday.
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Neil Gorsuch is a self-proclaimed "originalist." It is a philosophy very different from that of his mentor, Justice Byron White.
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Neil Gorsuch is the president's nominee for the Supreme Court. What do we know about him as a person? For one, he likes to drive a convertible with the top down.
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Judge Neil Gorsuch was friends with the late justice and subscribed to the judicial philosophy of "originalism" he popularized. So what is it, exactly? The doctrine has plenty of critics.
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Democratic senators could filibuster the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. But it is unclear whether this is a wise move or would cost them politically in the future.
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NPR's Audie Cornish and Nina Totenberg discuss President Trump's possible picks for the Supreme Court of the United States.
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The president has moved up his Supreme Court nominee announcement to Tuesday. He is expected to choose from one of three judges, any of whom would be a socially conservative voice on the court.
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President Trump says this week he will announce his choice for the Supreme Court seat vacated by by the death of Antonin Scalia nearly one year ago.
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President Trump says he plans to announce his pick for the high court vacancy next week. Among the finalists are three judges who were appointed to their current positions by President George W. Bush.
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Inauguration is full of tradition and fanfare, but the oath is the only part that is legally required for a new president to take office.