Associate Professor
Mugambi Jouet’s research focuses on American exceptionalism, criminal justice, and comparative history from a multidisciplinary perspective. He is an expert on the distinctive historical evolution of American law, government, and sociopolitical culture compared to other Western democracies: European nations, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
His scholarship has notably analyzed the death penalty, mass incarceration, juvenile justice, guns, and abortion. He is the author of Exceptional America: What Divides Americans From the World and From Each Other (University of California Press, 2017), a comprehensive book on the relationship between American exceptionalism and the intense polarization of modern America, from criminal justice to socioeconomic inequality and beyond.
His research has appeared or is forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews, including the American Journal of Comparative Law, American Journal of Legal History, Federal Sentencing Reporter, American Journal of Criminal Law, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, UBC Law Review, Nature - Palgrave Communications and Theoretical Criminology. He is the recipient of the 2021 Brophy Prize for the article in the American Journal of Legal History that “most significantly breaks new ground and adds new insights to the study and understanding of United States legal history.”
Jouet has been interviewed by many media outlets, such as The New York Times, Time, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, CBC, Radio Canada, France 24, and France Culture. His commentary has been featured in The New Republic, Slate, Boston Review, Mother Jones, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Hill, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Monde, France’s flagship newspaper.
Before joining USC in 2022, he was a law professor at McGill University following a Grey Fellowship at Stanford Law School. A member of the New York bar, he previously represented numerous indigent prisoners, from homicide cases to the “War on Drugs,” in Manhattan and the Bronx. He equally served as a judicial clerk at the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, and as an assistant clinical law instructor at Sciences Po in Paris. He has traveled widely internationally and is trilingual in English, French and Spanish.
Jouet earned his PhD in Law, summa cum laude, from Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne; his JD, cum laude, from the Northwestern University School of Law; his MPA in Policy Analysis from New York University; and BA in History from Rice University.
×
About Mugambi Jouet
Mugambi Jouet’s research focuses on American exceptionalism, criminal justice, and comparative history from a multidisciplinary perspective. He is an expert on the distinctive historical evolution of American law, government, and sociopolitical culture compared to other Western democracies: European nations, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
His scholarship has notably analyzed the death penalty, mass incarceration, juvenile justice, guns, and abortion. He is the author of Exceptional America: What Divides Americans From the World and From Each Other (University of California Press, 2017), a comprehensive book on the relationship between American exceptionalism and the intense polarization of modern America, from criminal justice to socioeconomic inequality and beyond.
His research has appeared or is forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews, including the American Journal of Comparative Law, American Journal of Legal History, Federal Sentencing Reporter, American Journal of Criminal Law, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, UBC Law Review, Nature - Palgrave Communications and Theoretical Criminology. He is the recipient of the 2021 Brophy Prize for the article in the American Journal of Legal History that “most significantly breaks new ground and adds new insights to the study and understanding of United States legal history.”
Jouet has been interviewed by many media outlets, such as The New York Times, Time, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, CBC, Radio Canada, France 24, and France Culture. His commentary has been featured in The New Republic, Slate, Boston Review, Mother Jones, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Hill, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Monde, France’s flagship newspaper.
Before joining USC in 2022, he was a law professor at McGill University following a Grey Fellowship at Stanford Law School. A member of the New York bar, he previously represented numerous indigent prisoners, from homicide cases to the “War on Drugs,” in Manhattan and the Bronx. He equally served as a judicial clerk at the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, and as an assistant clinical law instructor at Sciences Po in Paris. He has traveled widely internationally and is trilingual in English, French and Spanish.
Jouet earned his PhD in Law, summa cum laude, from Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne; his JD, cum laude, from the Northwestern University School of Law; his MPA in Policy Analysis from New York University; and BA in History from Rice University.
| Present | Associate Professor, University of Southern California Law ‐ USC Gould School of Law | |
|
|
||
Disciplines
Research Interests
American exceptionalism, criminal justice, mass incarceration, death penalty, juvenile justice, guns, abortion, comparative history, comparative law and government, law and society, social polarization, legal, social, and political theory, law and literature, legal history, American history, European history, Canadian history, Western world, Western democracies, and the West, and multidisciplinary research
| 2019 | Ph.D. in Law, summa cum laude, Universite Pantheon-Sorbonne (Paris I) ‐ École de droit | |
|
|
||
| 2006 | J.D., cum laude, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law | |
|
|
||
| 2003 | Master of Public Administration (Policy Analysis), New York University ‐ Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service | |
|
|
||
| 2001 | Bachelor of Arts in History, Rice University | |
|
|
||
Email:
