Bruce Johnson

Practice Areas

For more than four decades, Bruce Johnson has handled major First Amendment matters on all subjects - ranging from opposing prior restraints to drafting and pushing for enactment of the state’s reporter’s shield law, and from defending defamation and privacy cases to litigating prisoners’ rights of access to news. He also has been involved in other First Amendment matters including defending commercial speech protections from government attacks; drafting revised ethics rules and arguing for less onerous regulation of lawyers’ advertising and solicitation activities; protecting consumers’ constitutional rights to boycott from litigation attacks; advancing the development of state defamation privilege law to protect communications on matters of public interest from legal liability; opposing government subpoenas of reporters and the press; debating free-speech rights for robots; and drafting and lobbying for an effective correction-clarification statute for libel and similar claims. He is also the co-author of the Practising Law Institute treatise, Advertising and Commercial Speech: A First Amendment Guide.

Professional Memberships

Adviser, Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Defamation and Privacy project, American Law Institute, 2020

Member; Chair, 1999-2000, Media Law and Defamation Torts Committee, Tort and Insurance Practice Section – American Bar Association

Member; Executive Committee, 2000-2005; President, 2004 – Defense Counsel Section, Media Law Resource Center

Member, 2003-present; Regulation of Advertising Law Committee, 2013-2015 – Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers

Board Member, 1992-2020; Chair, 2004-2006; President, 1999-2001 – Seattle Repertory Theatre Board of Trustees

Board Member, 2006-present; Chair, 2011-present – Seattle Repertory Theatre Foundation Board of Trustees

Member, National Council for the American Theater, 2005-present

Board Member, EmcArts Inc., 2007-2013

President and Board Member, Pacific Musicworks, 2007-present

Board Member, Seattle Opera, 2015-present