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 high court heard cases testing whether employers are free to fire employees because they are gay or transgender. -
Monday marks the first day of the new Supreme Court term. The justices heard arguments in a case that examines whether Kansas' lack of an insanity defense is unconstitutional.
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A new sexual misconduct allegation against Justice Brett Kavanugh raises questions about why the Supreme Court doesn't have a code of conduct. Ari Shapiro talks to NPR's Nina Totenberg.
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Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has died at the age of 99. Appointed by President Gerald Ford, he was known for his "crafty and genial hand" and as a "judge's judge."
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the longest serving member of the current court. He had 18 dissenting and concurring opinions in the court's last term.
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The Supreme Court is blocking a citizenship question from the 2020 census for now. Also, it ruled that partisan redistricting is a political question that federal courts cannot weigh in on.
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Trump's tweets came hours after the Court decided to keep a question about citizenship off the form to be used for the head count. -
The Supreme Court is struggling with precedent — and that could have big implications for future cases, with liberals on the side of holding the line and conservatives on the other.
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The court struck down a Tennessee alcohol licensing residency requirement, opening up the pathway for big-box stores to enter the market. -
The Supreme Court threw out a ban on trademarks with "immoral" or "scandalous" content. That clears the path for a clothing line with a four-letter brand to win a trademark, but what about others?
