Hannah Brenner Johnson

Dean at SIU Simmons Law School

Hannah Brenner Johnson is a law professor, author, and expert on issues related to the intersection of law and gender. She brings extensive leadership as both an academic and nonprofit leader and is a renowned legal scholar who studies issues of inequality in the legal profession and disparate power dynamics that exist within institutions and systems. She began her tenure as Dean and Professor of Law of the Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School on July 1of this year.

Brenner Johnson has published numerous law review articles, book chapters, and three books, including Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court, published by New York University Press.  Brenner Johnson is also the co-author of the legal casebook, Leadership, Law, and Pipelines to Power. Her work has been cited by the Delaware Supreme Court, the Wisconsin Supreme Court in briefs before the courts including the United States Supreme Court, by numerous scholars in law and other disciplines, as well as in popular media like CNN, Forbes, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, Ms. Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and the Detroit Free Press.

Before her appointment as Dean at SIU Simmons Law School, she served as Vice Dean and Professor of Law at California Western School of Law. She taught previously at Michigan State University College of Law, where she served as director of externship programs, and co-director of the Frank J. Kelley Institute of Ethics. At Michigan State, she was also a core faculty member of the Center for Gender in the Global Context and a member of the Research Consortium on Gender-Based Violence. Before entering the legal academy as a professor, she served as the first executive director of the Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas School of Law, the Director of Women’s Leadership Programs at the University of Oklahoma Carl Albert Research & Studies Center, and the first executive director of the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.

She earned her B.A. from the University of Iowa in American Studies and her JD from the University of Iowa College of Law.