Professor Thea Johnson's scholarship concerns the development of criminal adversarial systems with an eye toward how lawyers and policy makers can improve the fairness of the criminal justice system. Her recent scholarship focuses on the role of plea bargaining in the criminal system and how relevant stakeholders make decisions about how and when to plea bargain. Her article, "Fictional Pleas," was selected for inclusion in the Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum and as the runner-up for the 2019 American Association of Law Schools' Criminal Justice Section Junior Scholars' Paper Competition.

Prior to joining the faculty at Rutgers Law, Johnson was an associate professor of law at the University of Maine School of Law where she was awarded Law Professor of the Year in 2019 and 2020. She was also a Thomas C. Grey Fellow at Stanford Law School, and a�public defender with both the Federal Defenders of New York and the Criminal Defense Division of The Legal Aid Society in New York.

Professor Johnson graduated from The George Washington University Law School where she spent a semester working for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. She received her degree in history from Harvard University.