Professor Mitchell “Mitch” F. Crusto, a native New Orleanian, has a J.D. from the Yale Law School, a M.A. in Jurisprudence from Oxford University, England (Marshall Scholar), and a B.A., Scholar of the House (History), magna cum laude from Yale College. He is a member of the Louisiana, Illinois, and Missouri Bar Associations and the Honorable Society of the Middle Temple in London. He clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and has served two U. S. Presidents in senior governmental policy positions. He came to the legal academy after extensive legal practice with major corporate and international law firms, investment and chemical manufacturing industries, management consulting, and governmental policy positions.
Professor Crusto currently teaches first-year Common Law Property and upper-level Wills, Trusts, and Estates, as well as the Scholarly Writing Seminar. Over twenty-six years at Loyola, he has taught several courses including Business Organizations I and II, Agency and Partnership, Insurance, Environmental Management, and American Legal History. In addition to his Loyola teaching experiences, he has taught as a Visiting Professor at Washington University (St. Louis), University of Miami (Florida), and the Vermont Law School. He has received several awards for teaching and for student advising.
Professor Crusto’s legal scholarship focuses on the inter-disciplinary intersections between law and society, particularly college athletes’ media rights, the Constitution and equality, the right to travel, marijuana reform, the law of sole proprietors, and liberty & property rights. He has recently published four seminal law articles on the media rights of college athletes, including Game of Thrones: Liberty & Eminent Domain, 76 U. MIA L. Rev. 653-741 (2022), https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol76/iss3/3. Newsweek recently published his OpEd on “How Affirmative Action Really Works.” His Essay, entitled “A Plea for Affirmative Action,” is forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review Forum. Crusto's book on civil liberties and disaster, entitled Involuntary Heroes: Hurricane Katrina's Impact on Civil Liberties, (Carolina Academic Press, 2015) was a Finalist for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Book Award.