Professor of Law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar. (Torts;
Business Torts and Intellectual Property; Community Economic
Development; Seminar on Race, Literature, and Critical Theory.)
Professor Troutt earned his B.A. with distinction from Stanford
University and his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served as executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1995. As a lawyer, Professor Troutt
practiced both public interest and corporate law, advocating on a broad
range of topics including inner-city economic development, intellectual
property, and commercial litigation. His law review scholarship
includes "Screws, Koons, and Routine Aberrations: The Use of Fictional
Narratives in Federal Police Brutality Prosecutions," New York University Law Review
(April 1999); "Ghettoes Made Easy: The Metamarket/Antimarket Dichotomy
and the Legal Challenges of Inner-City Economic Development," Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review
(Summer 2000) (the foundation article to the theory of antimarkets, the
potential role of consumer principles, and an introduction to a legal
paradigm for economic development in ghetto areas of American cities);
and "Ghettoes Revisited: Antimarkets, Consumption and Empowerment," Brooklyn Law Review
(Spring 2000) (the theoretical continuation of "Ghettoes Made Easy,"
specifically examining competing notions of "empowerment" through
inner-city economic development law and the comparative utility of
consumer law principles). The author of three unpublished novels, in
1998 Professor Troutt published The Monkey Suit--And Other Short Fiction on
African Americans and Justice (The New Press), a collection of stories
chronicling the imagined experiences of African Americans involved in
actual legal controversies from 1830 to the present. In addition to
publications analyzing poverty in California cities, his nonfiction
work includes regular columns about race, law, and society in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other periodicals. His essay, "The Race Industry, Police Brutality and the Law of Mothers," was published in Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men on Life, Law and Justice, edited
by Jabari Asim (2001). Professor Troutt is currently at work on another
book of fictional narratives as well as an article about trademark law
and commodification. He and his wife, Shawn, live in Brooklyn.
