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 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%. -
While some constitutional scholars argue that the pardon power is absolute, most believe a president cannot pardon himself. -
There are two schools of thought: either the right to abortion will be systemically hollowed out, leaving it a right on paper only, or Roe will be overturned. -
Conservatives now have a 6-to-3 majority — 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. -
With the percentage of Black lawyers stagnant over the last 10 years and clients demanding more diverse lawyers, a lot needs to be done to diversify a profession that is 86% white. -
The opinion said the case was "riddled with contingencies and speculation" that impede judicial review. The president has sought to use a census count that does not include undocumented immigrants. -
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued four states that Joe Biden won, claiming their changes to election procedures during the pandemic violated federal law. -
The case – Tanzin v. Tanvir — involved three Muslim men who said their religious freedom rights were violated when FBI agents tried to use the no-fly list to force them into becoming informants. -
The suit, viewed by election experts as a baseless Hail Mary attempt to get the justices to invalidate Joe Biden's victory, has little to no chance of success. -
In 2004 it was the famous "Woman In Gold" painting by Gustav Klimt. Now it is the Guelph Treasure. Both were owned by Jews and expropriated by the Nazis.
