NPR's Totenberg shares stories 'live' in Nashville
Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 |
A room filled with judges, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, lawyers, educators and “NPR nerds” among others welcomed a familiar voice to town March 3.
Nina Totenberg, National Public Radio’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent, was the featured speaker at the Don R. Elliott Distinguished Presidential Lecture Series presented by the College of Leadership & Public Service held at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. She shared a series of stories on topics from the U.S. Supreme Court to her father's famous Stradivarius violin.
“For much of my legal career she has been the first person I would look to for thoughtful, thorough and cogent reporting of all issues that relate to the United States Supreme Court,” said Cornelia A. Clark, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice.
Totenberg began the evening with a few personal stories about the U.S. Supreme Court justices who, she said, “are very smart folks, but they are still people with all of the foibles and virtues that real people have.” She shared quips and anecdotes about justices Harry Blackmun, Sonia Sotomayor, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom she has known since Ginsburg was a young lawyer.
“I was an even younger cub reporter who knew absolutely nothing about what I was doing,” she recalled. “I was reading this brief … of a case before the Supreme Court in 1972 or 1973, and I really didn’t understand it. I flipped to the front of the briefing to see who had written it, and I saw that was a law professor by the name of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I called her up, and I got an hour-long lecture, and it was the beginning of a long, and I think it’s fair to say, friendship over the years.”
Totenberg shared a few other stories about Ginsburg.
“One of my favorite Ginsburg stories dates back to that era and how she balanced — or sometimes had trouble balancing — the demands of child rearing and the demands of a very busy litigation schedule when she was the head of the American Civil Liberties project on women’s rights,” she said.
Ginsburg’s son, James, was at “some glossy Manhattan school,” Totenberg recalled, “and he kept getting into trouble. These events would inevitably provoke a call demanding that Mrs. Ginsburg come to school to discuss her son’s transgressions. Finally on a day when a very tired Ginsburg had pulled an all-nighter writing a brief, she got one of these calls from the head of school. Only, this time, Ginsburg replied, ‘You know, this child has two parents, and it’s his father’s turn. From now on, please, alternate these calls.’ She observed that the calls seemed to dry up after that as calling father away from his work was more of an inhibitor than calling mother away from her work.”
Ginsburg was the second woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Totenberg talked about the contributions of the first female appointed to the court, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Ginsburg.
“Both women traversed quite a journey before reaching their exalted status,” said Totenberg. “They began their careers at a time when women, simply because they were women, could legally be denied, not just jobs, but credit cards, credit of any kind, even the possibility of serving on a jury. These two women of that generation, however, had unbelievable self-confidence, always believing that they could be lawyers and leaders.”
She also shared her thoughts on “the news, the gossip” and President Donald Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Colorado to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Totenberg said he is a “highly regarded judge.”
“I’ve talked to lots and lots of people who know him and who have served with him. His colleagues all describe him as being an unfailingly polite and diplomatic judge who is a good listener,” she said. He is also “reliably conservative on social issues” with his best-known votes coming in decisions on regulations under the Affordable Care Act, she continued.
Totenberg discussed Gorsuch’s career, and said he has earned the reputation as a “cerebral conservative with a flair for writing vividly in a style that is similar to the tone of Justice (Antonin) Scalia’s style.”
“In the larger sense it’s fair to look at the Gorsuch nomination as both his supporters and critics do,” she said, “as fulfilling the Trumpian pledge to his conservative base to name someone in the mold of Justice Scalia, a man who I was privileged to call my friend and who was one of the most beguilingly entertaining human beings on the face of the earth. Gorsuch is a self-proclaimed disciple of Scalia and of his crusade.”
Along with a history lesson of the most recent Supreme Court justices, Totenberg also shared her predictions for how this month’s confirmation hearings may go.
“The first chaotic month of the Trump administration has energized and even radicalized the Democratic base to the point that they are now doing as Democrats and liberals what the conservative base has been doing for years — pushing their elected officials to one extreme or the other,” she said. “My prediction is that most Democrats will vote against Gorsuch, but there will not be enough votes to sustain a filibuster."
She noted that three sitting justices are getting older in age, which could open a few more seats in the near future. “After this year, I am loathe to make any predictions about anything in Washington,” Totenberg quipped.
Totenberg closed the evening with a personal story that her die-hard listeners have likely heard her tell on the air — the theft of her father’s Stradivarius violin that was stolen 35 years ago. It was recovered in 2015, and she announced during her remarks that the repaired instrument, that is more than 280 years old, would be played for the first time by one of her father’s former students in a private concert the first week of March in New York.
Totenberg’s reports air regularly on NPR’s critically acclaimed newsmagazines, All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. Totenberg’s coverage of legal affairs and the Supreme Court has won her widespread recognition. Newsweek says, “The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the crème de la crème is Nina Totenberg.” In 1991, her groundbreaking 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 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, among them: 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; 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.
In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. Totenberg has been honored eight times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting, and has received a number of honorary degrees. A frequent contributor to major newspapers and periodicals, she has published articles in the New York Times Magazine, the Harvard Law Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Parade magazine, New York Magazine and others.
Before joining NPR in 1975, Totenberg served as Washington editor of New Times Magazine. Prior to that she was the legal affairs correspondent for the National Observer. Totenberg has won every major journalism award in broadcasting, and is the only radio journalist to have won the National Press Foundation award for Broadcaster of the Year.
The Don R. Elliott Distinguished Presidential Lecture Series is designed to expose the Lipscomb University campus and the surrounding community to persons of influence in one or more issues of contemporary debate or discussion, with a preference for issues related to economics or political science. The Elliott Lecture is funded by an endowment established at Lipscomb by the Don R. Elliott Foundation.
For more information about Lipscomb University’s College of Leadership & Public Service, visit leadership.lipscomb.edu.
—Event photos by Kristi Jones