Carrie Johnson
Supreme Court and Justice Correspondent
Carrie Johnson is a Supreme Court and Justice Correspondent for NPR.
She covers a variety of stories about justice issues, law enforcement, and legal affairs for NPR's flagship programs and podcasts.
In recent years, Johnson has exposed misconduct by federal judges and uncovered systemic problems with internal accountability systems in the judiciary that fail to protect its most vulnerable employees. She's also reported widely on tensions between the executive branch and the federal bench, including a rise in threats against district court judges.
Johnson has followed the work of the Justice Department through the past four presidents, from a renewed focus on national security and civil rights into the norm-breaking tumult of the second Trump administration. She's adept at finding the vivid anecdotes at the heart of major news stories, from federal workers caught up in political sting operations, to the memes around the sandwich thrower in Washington, D.C.
Her work has been honored with awards from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, the Society for Professional Journalists, and SABEW. She served as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University from 2019-2020. In 2021, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers honored Johnson with a rarely-bestowed Champion of Justice award for her journalism work.
She has been a finalist for the Loeb Award for financial journalism and for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for team coverage of the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas.
Prior to coming to NPR in 2010, Johnson worked at the Washington Post for 10 years. Earlier in her career, she wrote about courts for the weekly publication Legal Times.
Johnson is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Benedictine University in Illinois.
