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Joel S. Johnson

Associate Professor of Law
Caruso School of Law

Biography

Professor Joel Johnson joined the Pepperdine Caruso Law faculty in 2022.  His research focuses on constitutional limits on substantive criminal law and explores the implications of those limits for statutory interpretation, criminal procedure, and federal courts.  Professor Johnson’s scholarship has appeared or will appear in The University of Chicago Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, and Notre Dame Law Review.  Multiple federal courts have cited his work.  Professor Johnson received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2023.

Professor Johnson teaches Statutory Interpretation, Criminal Procedure, and Torts.  During his first year as a law professor, he won the 1L Professor of the Year Award.

Professor Johnson is also an experienced Supreme Court and appellate litigator.  Before joining Pepperdine, he was an attorney in the Criminal Appellate Section of the Department of Justice and an appellate specialist at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and Williams & Connolly LLP.  In practice, Professor Johnson drafted dozens of merits-stage and cert-stage briefs in the Supreme Court, including winning merits briefs in Concepcion v. United States (2022), Carr v. Saul (2021), Seila Law v. CFPB (2020), and Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP (2019).  Professor Johnson also briefed and argued several cases in the federal courts of appeals.

At Pepperdine, Professor Johnson has continued to produce Supreme Court briefs, filing amicus briefs on behalf of himself in Dubin v. United States (2023) and in Grants Pass v. Johnson (2024).  Both briefs drew on arguments made in his scholarly articles.

Professor Johnson graduated first in his class from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as the Articles Development Editor of the Virginia Law Review and won the Margaret G. Hyde Award.  After law school, Professor Johnson clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge T.S. Ellis III of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

 

Articles

Popular Press

Media

Areas of Expertise

  • Criminal Law
  • Criminal Procedure
  • Constitutional Law
  • Statutory Interpretation

Courses

  • Criminal Procedure
  • Statutory Interpretation
  • Torts