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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Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement Thursday. President Biden says he hasn't decided who will fill the vacancy, but says he will keep his promise to name a Black woman to the bench.
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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has announced his retirement after 40 years as a judge, 27 of them on the nation's high court. President Biden will have the opportunity to name his first justice.
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Behind the scenes, Breyer, 83, pushed and prodded his fellow justices for consensus. His decision gives President Biden his first opportunity to name a new justice to the court. -
With the court already having heard arguments this term on abortion and guns, this case marks yet another politically charged issue that threatens to uproot decades of legal doctrine. -
Three Supreme Court justices issued statements Wednesday addressing an NPR story about relations among the justices. -
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's bid to undo a provision limiting the amount of money candidates can be reimbursed for personal loans to their own campaigns.
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The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't been this divided in decades. Disagreements over masking, social issues and the Constitution itself are playing out among the justices themselves.
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Anybody who regularly watches Supreme Court arguments is used to seeing testy moments. But you don't have to be a keen observer these days to see that something out of the ordinary is happening. -
But the court upheld a separate mandate for almost all employees at hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers that receive federal funds. -
Justices seemed more open to the vaccine mandate for almost all workers at hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical providers receiving federal Medicare and Medicaid funds. -
The two cases are in a preliminary posture, but how the court rules will very likely signal how these issues are ultimately resolved. -
This case from New York was the second time the court has refused to block such a state vaccine mandate for health care workers.
