Faculty Spotlight: Professor Hannah Brenner Johnson
“As law professors, we have the best job in the world. We have the luxury to be able to think and write and to advocate for social changes. And we get to work with students from all kinds of backgrounds and experiences, who are all united in wanting to become lawyers. I can’t think of a more rewarding career.” These are the words of Professor Hannah Brenner Johnson, California Western’s Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, whose career thus far reflects her dedication to the profession and the progress that it makes possible in society.
From an early age, Professor Brenner Johnson knew she wanted to help create a more equitable world, for women and for anyone perpetually and systemically disadvantaged. Over 25 years in the legal profession, she has been remarkably consistent in her pursuit of that goal— in her research and advocacy, in her teaching and administrative work.
As an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, Professor Brenner Johnson took a law school course that addressed racism in the legal system, which she says was “incredibly transformative.” It was that course that helped her realize how significant the law could be in both systemizing and uprooting oppression. She credits that course with leading her to law school and to a career studying systemic inequities—how they arise, how they are sustained, and how they can be challenged.
Professor Brenner Johnson notes that “statistics show that women have been graduating from law schools in equal number to men for a long time. But when you look at who is occupying positions of leadership and power in the profession, there's a massive disconnect.” So, with her J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law in hand, Professor Brenner Johnson quickly became both an advocate for and an example of how to close that divide. First, as the director of the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, where she helped develop research and evidence-based anti-bullying solutions for schools; then to the University of Oklahoma, where she ran the Women’s Leadership Programs at the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center and helped encourage more college-aged women to consider careers in politics and public service; then as the first director of the Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas Law School, where she worked to address inequality in the legal profession.
After joining the faculty at Michigan State in 2009, Professor Brenner Johnson began to hone her research, beginning a multi-decade study of systems, which has become the core of her scholarship. Higher education, prisons, immigration detention centers, the military— “all of these systems have this common dynamic that they exist in our society, but they're also separate from it. They are closed systems. And whether they're quasi-closed, like education, or fully closed, like the military, that closedness can perpetuate inequality.” Professor Brenner Johnson also embarked on a massive media study in which she and her co-author studied the gendered ways in which the media covered nominees to the United States Supreme Court.
A significant portion of this work inspired the 2020 publication of Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court (NYU Press), in which Professor Brenner Johnson and her co-author tell the overlooked stories of nine extraordinary women—a cohort large enough to occupy the entire Supreme Court bench—who appeared on presidential lists dating back to the 1930s but were never selected for the high court. In addition to sharing this “herstory,” the book advocates for a more diverse Supreme Court and posits strategies, drawn from the shortlisted women’s lives, as a blueprint for change. Professor Brenner Johnson emphasizes, “It is important to avoid imposing burdens on individuals and instead prioritize the creation of systemic reforms.”
When Professor Brenner Johnson came to California Western in 2016, she was pleased to join “a first-class faculty, doing work on incredible range of topics, who are so committed, not just to their research, but also to their students.” She also arrived knowing that she would have the opportunity to “affect the future of the institution,” which has borne out. Within a few short years of her arrival, she was asked to step into the position of Vice Dean for Academic Affairs.
When she was offered the role, however, Professor Brenner Johnson admits that she found herself, for the first time in her career, considering how her research might apply to her own life. She felt the internal doubts that unequal systems perpetuate in people who have been historically relegated to subservient positions. She considered whether she should “sideline” herself for this opportunity (a phrase coined by CWSL Professor Jessica Fink in her seminal article, Gender Sidelining and the Problem of Unactionable Discrimination). She asked, Do I really want to step into this position of leadership? Do I deserve it? Am I capable? Ultimately, she answered ‘yes’ to those questions.
Now, at the start of her fourth year in the position, Professor Brenner Johnson is grateful to wear as many hats as she does—having just successfully steered the school’s years-long ABA accreditation process and recruiting new faculty who do innovative work across the legal spectrum. Professor Brenner Johnson considers serving as Vice Dean an important service to the institution, supporting teachers in their scholarship and pedagogy, and empowering future leaders-- students and professors who need encouragement to seek the highest ranks of the profession.
She is honored, too, to have the chance to work with Dean Scott, to learn from her and to help execute her vision. In her short time at CWSL, Dean Scott has made great strides modernizing our law school. “California Western has been a law school that has served a very diverse student body for a long time. It is, of course, an incredible step forward to have our first female Dean of color,” which Professor Brenner Johnson notes is an increasing trend across the country; as of this year, 28 law schools are led by Black women.
In the years to come, Professor Brenner Johnson looks forward to continuing the work of empowering faculty who might not have considered stepping into leadership roles. She also looks forward to returning to the law school classroom once she concludes her term as Vice Dean. In the meantime, she has just completed a second edition of her casebook, Leadership, Law, and Power, published by West Academic, and is currently at work on a follow-up to Shortlisted, looking closely at the lives of the women of color who have been shortlisted, including Judge Amalya Kearse, the only woman of color who appeared on a presidential shortlist until Sandra Day O’Connor was selected by President Reagan in 1981. She is also working on a retrospective essay on the problem of sexual violence in carceral settings since the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
We are grateful for Professor Brenner Johnson’s service to California Western, as both an advocate for and an example of the change that a career in the law can create.