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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Justices expressed doubts about a plan to cut undocumented immigrants from a key census count — one that would exclude them for purposes of drawing new congressional districts.
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The Constitution says that for reallocating House seats, the census must count the "whole number of persons" in each state. But President Trump wants to subtract undocumented immigrants.
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Justices said the Gov. Andrew Cuomo's executive order limiting attendance in places of worship violates the First Amendment.
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Last July, a gunman killed Judge Esther Salas's son and wounded her husband. Now, there is bipartisan support for legislation that would shield the information of federal judges and their families.
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At least two of the court's conservative justices seemed to suggest the law should stand whether or not the individual mandate is found unconstitutional.
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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.
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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.
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At issue is a Catholic charity's refusal to screen same-sex couples as foster care parents.
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At issue in the case is the rights of a city to enforce its anti-discrimination policies in contracting against the rights of religious groups.
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New Justice Barrett, a mother of 7, is among those now weighing when juvenile offenders are so incapable of rehabilitation that they may be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.