She graduated from Wyandotte’s Theodore Roosevelt High School in 1965, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Wayne State University in 1969.
In 1980 Johnson became a Vermont Assistant Attorney General, and she served as the Chief of the Civil Rights Division.
[4] In 1990 Johnson was appointed an associate justice of the Vermont Supreme Court by Governor Madeleine Kunin, succeeding Louis P.
[8] This decision led to Vermont’s 2000 civil unions law, the first in the nation to allow same-sex couples to enter into partnerships similar to marriage.
Johnson resides in Middlesex, Vermont and has been involved in several international legal initiatives and programs, including teaching advanced seminars and lecturing at universities in Italy, a conference on judicial independence in Belarus, and a judicial reform program in Armenia.