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 鈥� most recently RBG 鈥� 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 鈥� anchored by Totenberg 鈥� 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 鈥� 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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According to statistics compiled through NPR number crunching and the SCOTUSblog Stat Pack, the justices swerved to the right, even by the standards of the traditionally conservative Roberts court. -
By a 5-4 vote, the court left in place the nationwide moratorium on evictions put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The moratorium is set to expire on July 31. -
The decision marks a triumph for a new brand of conservatism on the court, which is putting the Constitution's guarantee to the free exercise of religion at the highest level of protection. -
The court ruled that some crack cocaine offenders sentenced to harsh prison terms more than a decade ago cannot get their sentences reduced under a federal law designed to do just that. -
At issue is whether schools can punish students for off-campus speech. At the center of the case is a teenager suspended from her cheerleading team after using a vulgarity on Snapchat.
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Players contend the NCAA is operating a classic conspiracy to fix prices in the labor market. The NCAA maintains that expanding benefits would threaten "amateurism." -
Justices ruled 5-3 that when officers fired 13 shots at a fleeing suspect, their actions were a seizure under the Constitution, entitling the suspect to sue for damages. -
At issue is a 1975 California law that allows union organizers limited access to farms so they can seek support from workers in forming a union. -
The court sided with two churches that said a ban on indoor church services violated their rights to free exercise of religion. But the justices let stand restrictions that cap attendance at 25%. -
Chief Justice John Roberts will not take on the role for the trial that begins the week of Feb. 8, a source says. A chief justice presides only when a sitting president is on trial.
