Johanna Kalb

Johanna Kalb became Dean of the University of San Francisco School of Law on July 1, 2024, bringing to the role a distinguished record in legal scholarship, academic leadership, and public interest law. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.A. in International Relations with a focus on African Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a B.A. from Stanford University. Following law school, she clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Prior to joining USF, Kalb served as Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Idaho College of Law and as Associate Dean of Administration and Special Initiatives and Edward J. Womac Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law. She also served as Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School and as a fellow in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

Her research and teaching span federal and state constitutional law, international human rights, and the law of democracy. She is co-author of the first law school textbook on domestic human rights, Human Rights Advocacy in the United States (West, 3d ed. 2023), and her scholarship has appeared in the U.C. Irvine Law Review, the Yale Journal of International Law, the Yale Law and Policy Review, and the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, among other leading publications.

Dean Kalb is a nationally recognized expert on AI in legal education. She is a member of the Thomson Reuters Institute AI and the Future of Legal Practice Advisory Board. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Law School Admission Council as well its AI working group. She is a member of the Deans Steering Committee of the American Association of Law Schools and its advisory group for the AALS/West Academic partnership on AI.

• Constitutional law
• International human rights
• Law of democracy

• Yale Law School, JD
• Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, MA
• Stanford University, BA