The U.S. Supreme Court is in transition and could see a few justices retire, says an award-winning National Public Radio legal correspondent who will speak at U-M next week.
Nina Totenberg, who has covered the U.S. Supreme Court since 1968, says
justices John Paul Stevens and David Hackett Souter are the most likely to leave the country’s highest court. The next president will play a key role in shaping the court when it’s time to appoint successors — possibly another woman to join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the bench.
“It is the ultimate intersection between politics and law,” says Totenberg, whose lecture “The Supreme Court and its Impact on You” is set for 7 p.m. Feb. 21 in Mendelssohn Theatre. “The next president is likely to be under great pressure to name another woman.”
The event is free and open to the public.
Totenberg says the court has narrowly interpreted statutes in the last two years to make discrimination cases much harder to bring and to win.
“The law has changed dramatically, both in what Congress enacted and how the court has responded,” she says.
Totenberg says she enjoys covering justices because of their personalities and the variety of court cases, in areas such as civil rights, the environment, employment, Guantanamo Naval Base and affirmative action.
“They really are interesting to me, even when they sometimes sound boring on the surface,” she says. “My job is to make them comprehensive and interesting to people who are not lawyers.”
Her coverage of legal affairs and the Supreme Court has won her many honors and awards. In 1991 Totenberg’s 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’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings. NPR received the prestigious Peabody Award for its coverage, which was anchored by Totenberg.
The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Women’s Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Center for the Education of Women Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Howard R. Marsh Center for the Study of Journalist Performance, the Law School, the Provost’s Office, and Rackham Graduate School, with support from the departments of American culture, communications studies and psychology; the schools of public health and social work; and the Center for Law, Ethics and Health.
