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.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Arizona Voting Rule

Nina Totenberg — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:03:00 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a state-mandated requirement that prospective voters in Arizona provide proof of citizenship to be able to register to vote in national elections. But some experts are concerned that the court may have inserted a few "poison pills" in its opinion that would damage voting-rights protections someday down the road.

The case before the court involved a federal law that allows people to register to vote by mail using a federal form that requires the registrant to swear, under penalty of perjury, that he or she is a citizen.

Supreme Court Rules Against Patents On Human Genes

Nina Totenberg — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:28:00 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that human genes cannot be patented, upending 30 years of patent awards granted by the U.S. Patent Office. The court's unanimous decision has enormous implications for the future of personalized medicine and in many ways is likely to shape the future of science and technology.

Myriad Genetics, one of the nation's biotech leaders, isolated two genes with mutations that can indicate a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

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.

Supreme Court Rules Arrest DNA Collection 'Reasonable'

Nina Totenberg — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:14:00 +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.