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 court expressed a frosty attitude toward election lawsuits in four cases this year — from Wisconsin, Texas, Alabama and Florida. -
The Supreme Court justice revealed on Friday that she had begun a course of chemotherapy on May 19. In a statement, she said she is still able to do her job "full steam."
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The court's refusal to reverse a lower court order likely will prevent hundreds of thousands of people from voting in the November election.
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The court's conservative justices wrote separately a lot, often just for themselves. Meanwhile, the court's liberals let their victories speak for themselves and dissented as a bloc.
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Pamela Talkin was the court's marshal; Christine Luchok Fallon was its reporter of decisions.
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From abortion to religion and immigration, the recent court term featured just about every flashpoint in American law. Here are the highlights, including the influence of Chief Justice John Roberts.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with lawyer and SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein and NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg about the decisions reached by the U.S. Supreme Court this term.
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In two 7-2 rulings written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court allowed a subpoena in a New York criminal case but told a lower court to consider separation of powers when it comes to Congress.
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The Supreme Court upheld exemptions from Obamacare's birth-control mandate for private employers with religious and moral objections.
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The opinion upheld a Trump administration rule that significantly cut back on the Affordable Care Act requirement that insurers provide free birth control coverage under almost all health care plans.
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The 7-2 decision carving out a religious exemption could potentially affect other employees of religious hospitals, universities and charities.
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The U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws that remove or fine Electoral College delegates who refuse to cast their votes for the presidential candidate they were pledged to support.
