About

Kevin R. Johnson is the Mabie-Apallas Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Aoki Center at UC Davis School of Law, where he also holds an appointment as Professor of Chicana/o Studies. He joined the UC Davis law faculty in 1989 and served as Dean from 2008 to 2024, the longest term in the school's history. Johnson has taught a wide array of classes including immigration law, civil procedure, complex litigation, Latinos and Latinas and the law, and Critical Race Theory. He has published extensively on immigration law and civil rights, with notable works such as his books 'How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man's Search for Identity' and 'Immigration Law and the US-Mexico Border.' His scholarship has earned recognition, including being one of the '10 Most-Cited Immigration Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020' according to Brian Leiter's Law School Reports. Johnson is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and he earned an A.B. in economics from UC Berkeley, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. His professional background includes clerking for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and working as an attorney at Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe. Johnson has served on the boards of Legal Services of Northern California and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, holding leadership roles including President of the former. He has received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to law, civil rights, and the Latino community, including the Association of American Law Schools Michael A. Olivas Award, the Hispanic National Bar Association Law Professor of the Year, and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation Outstanding Achievement in Law and Policy Award. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation since 2016 and was elected to the American Law Institute in 2003. Johnson is a prominent voice in immigration law and policy, regularly blogging at ImmigrationProf and participating in national and international conferences.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Gender studies
• Law
• Engineering
• Mechanical engineering
• Criminology
• Media studies
• History
• Ethnology

Selected publications

• Deportation tactics from 4 US presidents have done little to reduce the undocumented immigrant population

  2025-07-25

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Immigration and the Supreme Court in the Early Days of the Second Trump Administration

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Trump Administration’s Racial Dragnet: Immigration Enforcement in Los Angeles

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <p>The Meaning and Significance Of Critical Immigration Legal Theory</p>

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How Prison Officials Manufactured Gangs and Gang Wars in Virginia’s Prisons

  Pluto Press eBooks · 2024-08-13

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• California Dreamin': DACA's Decline and Undocumented College Student Enrollment in the Golden State

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Urgent Need for a Carve Out Exception in the United Nations Security Council Veto Power

  Journal of Biosecurity Biosafety and Biodefense Law · 2024-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The present article analyzes the ineffectiveness of the United Nations’ enforcement of biological warfare violations. After the Biological Warfare Convention (BWC) of 1972, little has been done to punish violations. This is in part to the failure of the BWC to implement an accountability system. Additionally, the sanctioning powers of the United Nations Security Council have been routinely stymied by the veto powers of the five permanent members (China, Russia, United States, United Kingdom, and France). To ensure countries abide by the BWC, a solution is needed regarding veto powers. This article proposes that the United States should pursue a United Nations amendment creating a narrow carve-out exception of the veto power in relation to biological warfare violations.

  PublisherDOI

• Professor Rachel Moran: A Foundational Latina/o Civil Rights Scholar

  Texas A&M Law Review · 2023-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  With an illustrious scholarly career, Professor Rachel Moran is a most-deserving Texas A&M University Hagler Fellow. Previously a chaired professor of law and dean of UCLA School of Law, and a chaired professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, she currently is a Distinguished and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, where she was one of the founding faculty.

  PublisherDOI

• The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom

  Journal of American History · 2023 · 24 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Journal Article The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom Get access The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom. By Thulani Davis. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. xviii, 445 pp. Cloth, $114.95. Paper, $28.95.) Kevin R Johnson Kevin R Johnson University of California, Davis, School of Law, Davis, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 110, Issue 3, December 2023, Pages 559–560, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaad301 Published: 01 December 2023

  PublisherDOI

• Commentary on <i>Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California</i>, 140 S. Ct. 1891 (2020)

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-10-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This volume, part of the Feminist Judgment Series, shows how feminist legal theory along with critical race theory and intersectional modes of critique might transform immigration law. Here, a diverse collection of scholars and lawyers bring critical feminist, race and intersectional insights to Supreme Court opinions that deal with the source of the power to regulate immigration, state and local regulation of immigration, citizenship law, racial discrimination, employment law, access to public education, the rights of criminal defendants, the detention of noncitizens, and more. Feminist reasoning values the perspectives of outsiders, exposes the deep-rooted bias in the legal opinions of courts, and illuminates the effects of ostensibly neutral policies that create and maintain oppression and hierarchy. One by one, the chapters in this book reimagine the norms that drive immigration policies and practices. In place of discrimination and subordination, the authors here demand welcome and equality. Where current law omits the voice and stories of noncitizens, the authors here center their lives and experiences. Collectively, they reveal how a feminist vision of immigration law could center a commitment to equality and justice and foster a country where diverse newcomers readily flourish with dignity.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kathy Martínez

  9 shared

• Alma Castro

  Cal Humanities

  9 shared

• Laura Podalsky

  9 shared

• Vega Hurtado

  University of California, Davis

  9 shared

• Jorge Ruffi Nelli

  University of California, Davis

  9 shared

• Chon A. Noriega

  9 shared

• Lorena García

  University of California, Davis

  9 shared

• Julia Tuñón

  University of California, Davis

  9 shared

Awards & honors

• Distinguished Teaching Award (1993)
• Michael A. Olivas Award for Outstanding Leadership in Divers…
• Clyde Ferguson Award (2004)
• Hispanic National Bar Association Law Professor of the Year…
• National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Scholar…