
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 is whether states have the power to remove or fine so-called faithless electors. The case could affect not only the 2020 election but all future presidential elections.
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How the court decides these cases could dramatically change the balance of power among the three branches of government, shifting America's system of checks and balances.
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The high court heard cases testing whether employers are free to fire employees because they are gay or transgender.
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Separation of church and state, immigration and questions about impeachment could be on the table this term, which starts Monday and will almost surely be a march to the right on flashpoint issues.
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The new swing vote on the court is the conservative chief justice; Trump's appointees are going different directions; and Justice Ginsburg appears to be handing off the liberal torch to Justice Kagan.
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The high court agrees to review the Trump administration's elimination of a program designed to help children brought to the country illegally.
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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.
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The court decided four cases Monday, and three defied the usual ideological fissures.
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Justice Kennedy is a moderate and a champion for the gay-rights movement. President Trump will likely replace him with a staunch conservative, which would fundamentally shift the culture of the court.
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By a 5-4 vote, the court reversed a series of lower court decisions and said a rule banning nearly all travelers from five mainly Muslim countries was within the president's authority.