College of Law

About

Professor Eric Johnson teaches and writes about criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence. His current research is focused on the roles of causation and risk in substantive criminal law. His work has been published in an array of peer- and student-edited journals, including Law and Philosophy, the Boston University Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the U.C. Davis Law Review, and the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. In 2014 and again in 2016, he received the college’s annual Carroll P. Hurd Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship.

Eric’s research and teaching both are informed by his long experience as a government attorney. He spent 11 years in the Alaska Attorney General’s Office, first as an assistant attorney general (1990-1996) and then as a chief assistant attorney general (1996-2001). From 2001 to 2004, he was an assistant solicitor general in the New York State Attorney General’s Office. From 2004 to 2009, he directed the prosecution clinic at the University of Wyoming College of Law.

Education

JD University of Michigan
BA University of Washington

Areas of Expertise

Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Evidence

Selected Publications

What Authentication Requires, 77 Ala. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026)

Trust and the Limits of Trust: Rethinking the Doctrine of Novus Actus Interveniens, 2025 U. Ill. L. Rev (forthcoming 2025)

Habit, Crime, and Culpability, 113 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 35 (2023)

When Provocation Is No Excuse: Making Gun Owners Bear the Risks of Carrying in Public, 69 Buff. L. Rev. 943 (2021)

Dividing Risks: Toward a Determinate Test of Proximate Cause, 2021 U. Ill. L. Rev. 925 (2021)

Two Kinds of Coincidence: Why Courts Distinguish Dependent from Independent Intervening Causes, 25 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 77 (2017)

Cause-in-Fact After Burrage v. United States, 68 Fla. L. Rev. 1727 (2016)

Self-Mediated Risk in Criminal Law, 35 L. & Phil. 537 (2016)

Dynamic Incorporation of the General Part: Criminal Law’s Missing (Hyper)Link, 48 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1831 (2015)

Wrongful-Aspect Overdetermination: The Scope-of-the-Risk Requirement in Drunk-Driving Homicide, 46 Conn. L. Rev. 601 (2013)

Rethinking the Presumption of Mens Rea, 47 Wake Forest L. Rev. 769 (2012)

Courses

Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure: Investigation
Evidence
Law Teaching Practicum

USA Today quotes Johnson on shooting accountability cases
Johnson quoted in NY Times and USA Today on trial of Highland Park shooter’s father