Johanna Kalb

On July 1, 2024 Johanna Kalb assumed the role of Dean of the University of San Francisco School of Law. She previously served as Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Idaho College of Law. Under her leadership, the University of Idaho welcomed the three largest and most diverse classes in its history, launched three new clinics, and had three successive record-breaking fundraising years. Dean Kalb received the 2024 Diversity Award from the law school's diversity committee. Prior to her deanship, Dean Kalb was the Associate Dean of Administration and Special Initiatives and Edward J. Womac Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law. Her research and teaching interests include federal and state constitutional law, international human rights, and the law of democracy. She is a co-author, with Martha F. Davis, Risa Kaufman, and Rachel Lopez of the first law school textbook focused on domestic human rights, Human Rights Advocacy in the United States (West, 3d. ed. 2023). Her recent scholarship appears in 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, as well as the Washington Law Review Online, Michigan Law Review Online, the NYU Law Review Online, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. Dean Kalb is an academic fellow of the National Civil Justice Institute. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Law School Admission Council, and she is a member of the Deans Steering Committee of the American Association of Law Schools. From 2014 to 2016, Kalb served as Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School and from 2013 to 2021, she was a fellow in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

Dean Kalb is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies where she completed her M.A. in International Relations with a focus on African Studies. After law school, she served as a clerk for the Honorable E. Grady Jolly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the Honorable Ellen Segal Huvelle of the District Court of the District of Columbia. She is admitted to practice in the States of Mississippi and New York.

• Constitutional law
• International human rights
• Law of democracy

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