Skip to main content
Ben Johnson headshot

Ben Johnson

johnson@law.ufl.edu

CV

SSRN

Ben Johnson

Professor of Law

Ben Johnson is a Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. His scholarship examines the structure of judicial power in the federal courts, with particular attention to how the Supreme Court defines, expands, and exercises its own authority.

Across a series of historical and theoretical works, Professor Johnson has explored how the Court has transformed traditional limits on jurisdiction, remedies, and appellate review. His articles trace the origins and evolution of question selection, vacatur, supervisory stays, and emergency relief, arguing that modern practices have reshaped the relationship between judgment, jurisdiction, and law declaration. His work has appeared in The Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the California Law Review, and other leading law reviews, and has received national awards from the American Association of Law Schools and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.

In parallel, Professor Johnson conducts empirical and formal research on judicial behavior and institutional design. His coauthored work on the Supreme Court’s responsiveness to public opinion won the American Political Science Association’s Law & Courts Section Best Conference Paper Award and was published in Political Research Quarterly. He has ongoing projects at the intersection of federal courts, formal theory, and machine learning.

Professor Johnson holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University.

Education

Ph.D., Princeton University (Politics)
J.D.. Yale Law School
M.A., Boston University (Economics)
B.A., Baylor University


Expertise

Corporate Law, Federal Courts, Formal and Quantitative Methods


Courses

  • Federal Courts
  • Empirical Methods
  • Supreme Court agenda setting
  • Business Associations
  • Law & Accounting/Finance


Publications

Articles by subject

Federal Courts and Judicial Power
  • The Supervisory Stay, Cal L. Rev. (forthcoming) (with Matthew Lambertson)
  • A History of Vacatur, 135 Yale L.J. 761 (2026)
  • May Federal Courts Answer Questions When Not Deciding Cases?, 100 Notre Dame L. Rev. 583 (2025)
  • The Origins of Supreme Court Question Selection, 122 Colum. L. Rev.793 (2022) (winner of AALS Federal Courts section award for Best Untenured Article on Federal Jurisdiction)
Judicial Politics and Public Law
  • The Active Vices, 74 Ala. L. Rev. 917 (2023)
  • The Civil Rights Cases and Black Constitutional Politics, 65 Ariz. L. Rev. 579 (2023) (with Sean Beienburg)Judges Breaking the Law: An Empirical Study of Financially Interested Judges Deciding Cases, 99 N.C. L. Rev. 1 (2020) (with John Newby Parton)
  • The Supreme Court’s (Surprising?) Indifference to Public Opinion, 74 Pol. Res. Q. 18 (2020) (with Logan Strother) (Winner of the American Political Science Association’s Law & Courts Section 2020 Best Conference Paper Award)
  • The Supreme Court’s Political Docket: How Ideology and the Chief Justice Control the Court’s Agenda and Shape Law, 50 Conn. L. Rev. 581 (2018)
  • Why Does the Supreme Court Uphold So Many Laws?, 2018 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1001 (with Keith Whittington)
Formal Theory
  • Should Like Cases Be Decided Alike?, A Formal Analysis of Formal Equality, 54 J. Legal Stud. 83 (2025) (with Richard Jordan)
  • A Theory of Corporate Fiduciary Duties, 49 BYU L. Rev. 1013 (2024)