Marissa Jackson Sow teaches and writes in the areas of contracts, constitutional law, international law, human rights, law and philosophy, and rhetoric. Her most recent works, Protect and Serve, and Rebuilding the Master’s House, were published in the California Law Review, and Michigan Law Review Online, respectively, and additional work is forthcoming in the University of California Irvine Law Review. 

Professor Jackson Sow earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School, her Master of Laws from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her B.A. from Northwestern University. Immediately prior to returning to academia, Professor Jackson Sow served as a Leadership in Government Fellow for the Open Society Foundations and a 2020 Fellow for the Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent hosted by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She was previously a law clerk to the late Honorable Sterling Johnson, Jr. in the Eastern District of New York, and the late Honorable Damon J. Keith on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Born in Bermuda, Marissa Jackson Sow is a proud Detroiter, a Jamaican American, the child of immigrants, a part-time Dakaroise,  and a full-time mom. Marissa is committed to transformative justice, to the arts, and to creating spaces for international exchange and mutual power building among people around the world resisting domination.