Franita Tolson is Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law at the USC Gould School of Law.

Her scholarship and teaching focus on the areas of election law, constitutional law, legal history, and employment discrimination. She has written on a wide range of topics including partisan gerrymandering, political parties, the Elections Clause, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

Her research has appeared in the nation’s leading law reviews. Dean Tolson also coauthored the election law casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 6th ed., 2022), and her forthcoming book, In Congress We Trust?: Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era, will be published by Cambridge University Press.

A noted election law expert, Dean Tolson has testified before Congress numerous times on voting rights issues. She has written for or appeared as a commentator for various news media outlets including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. In addition, she worked as an election law analyst for CNN in 2020 and NBC in 2024.

She previously served as USC Gould’s interim dean, as well as vice dean for faculty and academic affairs.