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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Ahead of soon-to-be former President Trump's Senate trial, constitutional scholars disagree on whether the Founders intended for a president no longer in office to be tried by the Senate. -
Conservatives now have a 6-to-3 majority 鈥� a vote to spare on any given issue. Experts expect the new majority to move aggressively on an agenda more conservative than any seen since the 1930s. -
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued four states that Joe Biden won, claiming their changes to election procedures during the pandemic violated federal law. -
Justices said the Gov. Andrew Cuomo's executive order limiting attendance in places of worship violates the First Amendment. -
There would be enormous consequences were the court to throw out the ACA, which has survived twice in the high court. But the court's makeup is very different now than on those past occasions. -
President Trump has made unfounded allegations of "fraud" in the election and said the Supreme Court, with three of his appointees, will be the final arbiter. Legal experts aren't so sure. -
The hearings, which start at 9 a.m. ET on Monday, begin against the backdrop of early voting that has begun in many states and just 22 days before Election Day. -
The new term, which begins Monday, will see eight justices, not the usual nine. And because of COVID-19, once again the justices will gather by telephone hookup to hear the arguments. -
NPR's Nina Totenberg first encountered law professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1971. They became close friends after Ginsburg moved to Washington to serve on the federal appeals court. -
The justice's demise gives Republicans the chance to tighten their grip on the court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be at the center of that battle.
