David Dante Troutt

Professor of law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar (Torts; Business Torts and Intellectual Property; Community Economic Development; Jurisprudence Seminar on Race, Literature, and Critical Theory)

David Dante Troutt joined the Rutgers Law School-Newark faculty in 1995. As a lawyer who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991, Professor Troutt practiced both public interest and corporate law, advocating on a broad range of areas including inner-city economic development, intellectual property, and commercial litigation. He writes in two primary areas -- metropolitan equity and race as well as intellectual property and culture -- often combining law and other disciplines. His law review scholarship includes, among other works, "A Portrait of the Trademark as a Black Man: Intellectual Property, Commodification, and Redescription," 38 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1141 (2005); "Ghettoes Made Easy: The Metamarket/Antimarket Dichotomy and the Legal Challenges of Inner-City Development," 35 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (2000); "Screws, Koons, and Routine Aberrations: The Use of Fictional Narratives in Federal Police Brutality Prosecutions," 74 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 18 (April 1999).

Professor Troutt is also the author or/and editor of several books: The Monkey Suit -- and Other Short Fiction on African Americans and Justice (The New Press, 1998), a collection of stories chronicling the imagined experiences of African Americans involved in actual legal controversies from 1830 to the present; After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina (The New Press, 2006) (including an essay, "Many Thousands Gone, Again"); and The Importance of Being Dangerous, a novel (HarperCollins, 2007).

In addition to publications analyzing poverty in California cities and New Orleans, Professor Troutt's nonfiction work includes regular columns about race, law, and society in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other periodicals as well as chapters in a variety of anthologies. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Shawn and daughters Naima and Jasmine.