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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At issue was a New York City law that allowed residents to have a permit for a gun at home but barred them from transporting the gun elsewhere except to seven shooting ranges inside the city. -
With Justice Brett Kavanaugh replacing Anthony Kennedy, a clear conservative majority could make regulating guns very difficult.
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The Supreme Court granted the president's request to temporarily block the release of his tax records to the House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed a New York accounting firm for them.
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The opera-loving justice was back to host the annual Supreme Court concert that kicks off the holiday season.
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Supreme Court May Side With Trump On 'DREAMers'At issue is the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which granted temporary protection from deportation to roughly 700,000 young people. -
DACA Recipients Look To Supreme Court For HopeThe Trump administration is asking the court to invalidate the program that temporarily protects from deportation some 700,000 DREAMers who were brought to the country illegally as children. -
The Harvard Law Student And DREAMer Whose Fate Could Be Decided By Supreme CourtMitchell Santos Toledo was brought to the U.S. when he was 2. "This is our home," he says. -
The Supreme Court heard arguments that could limit the scope of the Clean Water Act. At issue is whether a Maui wastewater plant needs a federal permit because effluents end up in the ocean.
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There are a half dozen cases involving Trump subpoenas making their way up to the Supreme Court. But one before the 2nd Circuit is headed to the court like a rocket ship.
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At issue is whether Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars sex discrimination, covers gay and transgender workers.
