Juris Doctor (J.D.)
Harvard Law School
2000
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Faculty
Faculty
Darin Johnson
Department/Office
- Faculty, Law Department
School/College
- School of Law
Additional Positions
-
Journals, School of Law
Biography
Darin Johnson is a Professor of Law at Howard University School of Law. Johnson received his B.A. from Yale College and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. At Harvard Law School, he was an Executive Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
Johnson was recognized by Harvard Law School with the Irving R. Kaufman Public Interest Fellowship, the Samuel Heyman Fellowship for Public Service, and the Wasserstein Public Interest Fellowship. During his final year of law school, Professor Johnson was selected as one of only two commissioned U.S. Army officers to serve in the Secretary of the Army General Counsel’s Office Honors Program at the Pentagon. He served as an Assistant General Counsel to the Army Secretariat for four years, completing his military service with the rank of Captain.
After leaving the Pentagon, Professor Johnson continued to practice law as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser. During his tenure with the Office of the Legal Adviser, he advised on a wide range of international legal issues, involving Middle Eastern, political-military, United Nations, and other multilateral matters. He served as the Legal Adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Johnson also served on detail to the Office of the White House Counsel during the Obama Administration. He served as Chief of Staff in the Office of the Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions, which was tasked with coordinating U.S. assistance to politically transitioning countries in the Middle East and North Africa following the Arab Spring uprisings. He received several Departmental honors for his work.
Johnson's research interests include constitutional reform, reconciliation, and the rule of law in post-conflict and transitioning states. He provides legal advice on matters of public international law and the rule of law in post-conflict, transitioning, and developing countries through his work as a Senior Peace Fellow with the Public International Law and Policy Group and his consultancy work.
Johnson has also served as a visiting professor, an adjunct professor and a lecturer at George Washington University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, the Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law, and the American University Washington College of Law. He has been honored to receive the Faculty Member of the Year Award from the Howard Law Student Bar Association. Professor Johnson is a member of the Illinois Bar, the D.C. Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar.
Education & Expertise
Education
Bachelors of Arts (B.A.)
Yale University
1997
Publications and Presentations
Publications and Presentations
Revolution, Peace and Justice in Sudan
Revolution, Peace and Justice in Sudan
After decades of internal civil conflict, a peaceful popular revolution toppled longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. The popular revolution paved the way for the transitional government of Sudan to negotiate the October 2020 Juba Peace Agreement, a comprehensive peace agreement with a coalition of regional armed movements. The 2019 revolution and the 2020 peace process created the opportunity for Sudan to transition to a peaceful multi-ethnic participatory democracy with shared constitutional powers, economic prosperity, and respect for human rights throughout all of Sudan. The popular revolution and peace process also laid the groundwork for the establishment of transitional justice and accountability mechanisms for the human rights atrocities committed by the Bashir regime and other parties to Sudan’s decades-long violent internal conflicts.
Homegrown and Global
Homegrown and Global: The Rising Terror Movement
White supremacist terrorism is a rising threat that has been overlooked by national security authorities as a global threat, even though white supremacist terrorism now surpasses Al Qaeda- and ISIS-associated terrorism in the scope and impact of its destructiveness in the United States. White supremacist terrorism has been viewed exclusively as isolated homegrown domestic terror and has not been understood as part of a global terror movement. Drawing from social science typologies, this Article establishes that a global white supremacist terror movement now exists. This Article seeks to expand public awareness and understanding that white supremacist terrorism is a transnational threat. This Article also aims to galvanize sufficient counterterror responses at the domestic and international level by offering recommendations on how states and international institutions should address white supremacist terror as a global phenomenon.
Russian Election Interference and Race-Baiting
Russian Election Interference and Race-Baiting
Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election exposed the nation’s vulnerability to targeted campaign disruption by foreign intelligence actors through social media. This Article advocates that national security institutions adopt an explicit “racism as national security threat” framework in place of the implicit “minority race as threat” framework that has previously shaped national security institutions’ behavior. It traces how a minority race as threat framework has historically guided national security institutional action in significant ways. Further, it elucidates how a racism as national security threat framework promotes American antidiscrimination law and international human rights law, and how the strategic retrenchment of policies, programs, and practices that engender racial discrimination will reduce American vulnerability to foreign exploitation.
The Problem of the Terror Non-State
The Problem of the Terror Non-State: Rescuing International Law from ISIS and Boko Haram
This article examines how terror non-states, such as ISIS and Boko Haram, blur the distinctions between non-state actors and states under international law. Terror non-states’ confounding of this dichotomy undermines the efficacy of international human rights law in the territories that they control, complicates responsive foreign military intervention, and confuses the appropriate legal framework that governs armed conflicts in which they are involved. This article assesses these challenges and makes recommendations from a perspective that gives primacy to the protection and liberation of vulnerable populations.
Beyond Constituent Assemblies and Referenda
In January 2014, three years after the onset of the Arab Spring, Egypt and Tunisia each adopted a new constitution. In the article, the author develops an analytical framework for assessing whether the constitutions of transitional states are legitimate, and applies that framework to the constitution-making processes in Egypt and Tunisia. The framework draws from comparative constitutional scholarship theory but offers a new way to analyze the validity of constitutions created in moments of transition and uncertainty. The framework contains three markers of constitutional legitimacy: (1) processual legitimacy through an inclusive drafting and ratification process, (2) substantive legitimacy through the incorporation of international human rights law norms, and (3) applicatory legitimacy through the inclusion of institutional mechanisms for the full and fair implementation of constitutional protections. Applying this analytical framework, the article compares and contrasts the constitution-making processes in Egypt and Tunisia and assesses the legitimacy of the Arab Spring constitutions that both nations adopted.