Etienne C. Toussaint is an award-winning private law scholar and movement lawyer who uses critical legal theory to explore race, culture, and social movements. His research focuses on poverty, food insecurity, and environmental injustice in the U.S. political economy, advocating for progressive law reform based on principles of abolition democracy, human rights, and movement lawyering. He teaches Contracts, Business Associations, Law and Political Economy, and Critical Legal History.

Toussaint is nationally recognized for his teaching, scholarship, and service. In 2024, he received the National Bar Association’s 40 Under 40 Award. In 2023, he was named a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and earned a Faculty Scholarship Award and Faculty Diversity Leadership Award from the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law. He also received the Junior Great Teacher Award from SALT in 2022 and the Stegner Center Young Scholar award in 2021.

His work has been featured at prestigious conferences like the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum and Georgetown Law Center’s Law & Humanities Workshop. His scholarship has been published by the Cambridge University Press, California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Harvard Environmental Law Review, among others.

Before joining the University of South Carolina, Toussaint taught Contracts, Business Organizations, and Law and Literature at the University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law. He also co-directed the UDC Community Development Law Clinic. His legal career includes roles as a project finance associate at Norton Rose Fulbright, a Law & Policy Fellow at the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, and a Friedman Fellow at The George Washington University Law School, where he earned an LL.M. in Advocacy.

Toussaint holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, an M.S.E. in Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Environmental Law Review and Vice-President of the Board of Student Advisers. He is currently Chair of the AALS Minority Section and sits on the Executive Boards of the AALS Professional Responsibility Section and Business Associations Section.

Born in the South Bronx, Toussaint is married to Dr. Ebony A. Toussaint, Ph.D., and is the father of their three amazing sons.