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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At the U.S. Supreme Court Monday, the justices heard arguments in a case testing whether children conceived through in vitro fertilization after the death of a parent are eligible for Social Security survivors benefits.
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Two eras clash on Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court, when a law written in 1939 is applied to in vitro fertilization. At issue is whether children conceived through in vitro fertilization after the death of a parent are eligible for Social Security survivors benefits.
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The court said it is making the same-day audio available because of the "extraordinary public interest" in the health care cases. The legal challenges to the Obama overhaul law are to be argued for six hours over a three-day period at the end of March.
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The 2004 ruling upheld the use of a 1789 U.S. law that allows civil damage suits against foreign individuals accused of committing human rights atrocities abroad.
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On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court hears two cases testing how American law intersects with international law. One case involves a lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell Oil, which is accused of aiding and abetting the Nigerian government in committing atrocities in the 1990s.
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The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case about lies, big and small, and when those lies can be a crime under the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. At issue is the constitutionality of a law making it a crime to lie about being the recipient of military medals.
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By agreeing to hear a case on admissions at the University of Texas, the newly energized conservative majority on the high court signaled it may be willing to severely cut back on the use of racial preferences.
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Borrowers claim Quicken charged them "something for nothing" when it included a loan discount fee, even though the borrowers did not receive a lower interest fee. At issue is whether that charge violates a a 1974 federal law aimed at preventing abusive practices in real estate closings.
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The justice was on vacation in the Caribbean island of Nevis and was unharmed.