Ó£»¨Ó°ÊÓ

Biography

I grew up in a family of storytellers, and story is central to my work in law. A lifelong love of music and movies has left me curious about the narrative and the performative parts of social and legal storytelling, including the visual and auditory aspects, and the place of the body.

I am drawn to collaborative processes in my writing, my research and my pedagogy. I value the many opportunities I have had to learn from community partners about what collaborative practices could look like in contemporary times. In my role as Associate Director of the Indigenous Law Research Unit (ilru.ca), who partners with Indigenous communities who work to re-articulate their laws to address the challenges they face today, I am constantly reminded of the crucial importance of stories and storytelling in shaping our world.

I spend my summers playing with clay, trying to ground my more theoretical interests in a world of physical practice and visual representation. This gives me an opportunity to actively work at the intersection of theory and practice, attentive to the place of temporality and material culture in the worlds we co-construct.

Education

• SJD Law University of Michigan. 2000.

• Dipl. in Univ. Teaching Pedagogy University of New Brunswick. 1998.

• LLM Law University of Michigan 1995.

• LLB with Distinction Law University of Alberta 1991.

• MBA Management  University of Alberta 1990.

• BMus Music University of Calgary 1985.

Selected books

• Napoleon, Val, Rebecca Johnson, Debra McKenzie, and Richard Overstall. 2024 Indigenous Intellectual Property: An Interrupted Intergenerational Conversation. University of Toronto Press.

Selected publications

• Johnson, Rebecca. 2024. "Testify! Reflections on Cultural Legal Studies and Indigenous Legal Orders." In Routledge Handbook of Cultural Legal Studies, edited by Karen Crawley, Thomas Giddens and Timothy D. Peters, 75-91. New York: Routledge.
• Johnson, Rebecca. 2024. "Legal Reimaginations - Notes from the North on engaging with Indigenous Legal Orders." Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 35, no. 2: 378-400. Calder, Gillian, and Rebecca Johnson. 2024. "Frames, Fiends, Feelings and Family: Succession’s affect and the law school classroom." DePaul Law Review 73, no. 3: 805-824.
• Johnson, Rebecca. 2023. "Unsettling Agreements: Law & Art in The Witness Blanket, and in The Witness Blanket Stewardship Agreement." LawArt 4 (2023) 115-160 4: 115-160. . 

Courses

• Law 102: The Criminal Law Process
• Law 104: Law, Legislation and Policy
• Law 315: Business Associations
• Law 315I: Transsystemic Business Associations
• Law 343-1: Cultural Property
• Law 388A: Indigenous Law Research, Method and Practice
• Law 395A: Intersocietal Jurisprudence Through Cinema

Graduate supervision

I am particularly interested in supervising graduate students working in areas related to legal theory, law and film, law and popular culture, Indigenous legal orders, gender/sexualities, legal pedagogies, law and emotion, narrative, dissent and legal change.