Nina Totenberg

Why The FISA Court Is Not What It Used To Be

Nina Totenberg — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 07:07:00 +0000

The furor over recently exposed government surveillance programs has posed an abundance of political challenges for both President Obama and Congress. Relatively unmentioned in all of this, however, is the role of the courts — specifically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, and how its role has changed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Obama has said that there are tradeoffs between privacy and security in an age of international terrorism.

Former Mass. Chief Justice On Life, Liberty And Gay Marriage

Nina Totenberg — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 07:25:00 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court, on the brink of issuing two same-sex-marriage decisions, is facing a question that Margaret Marshall had to resolve for her state a decade ago, as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Law Enforcement Celebrates Supreme Court's DNA Ruling

Nina Totenberg — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:43:00 +0000

A divided Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that it's constitutional for police to take DNA swabs from suspects who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime. The court compared such DNA sampling to fingerprinting when a suspect is booked.

Supreme Court Rules DNA Can Be Taken After Arrest

Nina Totenberg — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 22:53:00 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime, and see if the DNA matches any samples from unsolved crimes in a national database.

The 5-to-4 decision split the court's conservative and liberal blocs, with conservative Justice Antonin Scalia authoring a fiery dissent.

Supreme Court Declines Review Of Planned Parenthood Case

Nina Totenberg — Tue, 28 May 2013 19:11:00 +0000

In the first Planned Parenthood defunding case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices have refused to disturb a lower court decision that barred Indiana from stripping Medicaid payments to the organization.

More than a dozen states have enacted or considered laws that bar Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid payments for treating poor women.