Olatunde Johnson

Olatunde Johnson is the Ruth Bader Ginsburg’ 59 Professor of Law at Columbia Law School where she teaches, writes, and provides public commentary about antidiscrimination law, administrative law, courts, and inequality in the United States.  She directs Columbia’s Constitutional Democracy Initiative and co-directs the Center on Constitutional Governance at Columbia Law School.

In 2021, she served on the White House Commission on the Supreme Court. In 2023, she received a Columbia University service award for her collaboration on the podcast “Through the Gale” about the role of lawyers after the pandemic and protests of 2020, and for organizing the “Beyond the Casebook” introduction discussion series on inclusive democracy. She has received several awards for her teaching and service including Columbia University’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching and Columbia Law School’s Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2016.  

Prior to academia, Professor Johnson served as constitutional and civil rights counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  Professor Johnson graduated from Yale University and from Stanford Law School.  After law school, she clerked for Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court.