Personality Spotlight: Dawn Johnsen

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- President-elect Barack Obama tapped the Clinton administration again, naming Dawn Johnsen to lead the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Justice Department.

If approved by the U.S. Senate, she would return to a position she once held on an acting basis.

Johnsen is a law professor and Ira C. Batman Faculty Fellow at Indiana University, her faculty Web site said. She joined the faculty in 1998, following a career in Washington.

Johnsen graduated from Yale summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in economics and political science. She also graduated from Yale Law School, where she was an article and book review editor for the Yale Law Journal.

She worked for the U.S. Justice Department under former President Bill Clinton, including serving as acting assistant attorney general heading the Office of Legal Counsel. In that capacity she provided constitutional and other legal advice to the attorney general, the counsel to the president and the general counsels for the various executive branch agencies.

From 1988-1993, she was the legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. She also worked at the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project and clerked for Judge Richard D. Cudahy of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Johnsen is on the national board of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and is co-chair of the organization's Issue Group on Separation of Powers and Federalism.

Her research interests include issues of separation of powers and civil liberties.