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 state cut off funding to Planned Parenthood because it provided non-abortion services to Medicaid patients. -
At issue is whether the charity Catholic Charities is qualified to be exempt from state unemployment taxes as a religious institution. -
Ohio and 16 other Republican-dominated states have sued, asserting that a waiver granted to California to set its own rules violates the basic design of the U.S. Constitution, which they assert should treat states as equals. -
The court's action was the second time the justices declined to intervene in an admissions program based on geography since their 2023 ruling invalidating affirmative action in higher education. -
At issue was a Hawaii State Supreme Court decision that allowed the state to prosecute a man carrying a loaded pistol without a license. -
Three Tennessee families—and the Biden administration—are challenging the state's ban. -
At issue is a Tennessee law that bans access to hormones, puberty blockers and other treatments for trans kids in the state. -
The focal point of the case is 2009 law enacted by Congress that gives the Food and Drug Administration a mandate to curb the availability of nicotine products for minors. -
The justices will hear arguments about the FDA's rejection of some e-cigarettes. High schoolers are at the center of the case. -
Ted Olson, the Bush-era solicitor general, has died at age 84. He was a towering figure in the legal profession who argued 65 cases at the Supreme Court as solicitor general and as a private lawyer.
