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 justices heard arguments Tuesday in a case about how far employers must go to accommodate the religious views of their employees. -
The Supreme Court hears arguments in an important case that pits religious employees against others who have to pick up the slack on Sundays. -
Arguments on Tuesday center on a powerful tool for fighting fraud in government contracts and programs. The case examines whether major pharmacies knowingly overcharged Medicare and Medicaid. -
The U.S. Supreme Court has issued an administrative stay in a Texas case involving limited access to the abortion drug mifepristone.
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The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to block a settlement in a long-running suit involving the adjudication of applications for the cancellation of student loan debts at 151 for-profit colleges. -
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has responded to a news report about his failure to disclose lavish trips paid for by a conservative billionaire — trips with a value in the millions of dollars.
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas responded to a news report about his failure to disclose trips paid for by a conservative billionaire friend, saying he had been advised they were not reportable. -
The state's law was challenged by a 12-year-old transgender girl named Becky Pepper-Jackson, who has lived as a girl since fourth grade, according to court papers. -
The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in a case about whether a federal law that prohibits inducing unlawful immigration violates the First Amendment. -
At Wednesday's argument, the justices struggled to reconcile their own previous decisions enforcing the nation's trademark laws and what some of them saw as a potential threat to free speech.
