Justin L. Brooks is a lawyer and Ph.D. candidate in Government (Political Philosophy) at Harvard University. While at Harvard, Justin has been awarded the Presidential Scholarship, the Graduate Prize Fellowship, the Ardis and Robert James Graduate Fellowship, and the Harold Laski Fellowship, which is given to Harvard's top graduate school applicant in political theory.

Justin's research interests span political thought, legal history, criminal law, and black studies. His first academic publication, Juridical Occasions for Racial Formation: The Freedmen's Bureau, Labor, and Private Law, is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review Discourse. The Essay explores the racial philosophy of the Freedmen's Bureau in the context of nineteenth-century contract law and jurisprudence.

In addition to scholarship, Justin engages in public speaking and writing to democratize legal knowledge. Recently, he gave a talk at Harvard Law School's 2024 Critical Race Theory Conference that emphasized the importance of bridging critical race theory and black studies as the former looks towards the horizons of race and law scholarship. 

In June 2023, Justin was featured in Exposing Parchman, a documentary film on the A&E Network. Produced by Roc Nation, the three-hour investigative series explores ongoing efforts to reform Mississippi's correctional system. Justin's public essays have appeared in The Appeal, American Prospect, Truthout, and Slate.

Justin is a former law clerk for the Honorable James E. Graves, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and a former public defender for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Roxbury, MA. 

Presently, Justin is on a formal leave-of-absence from his doctoral studies to clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for the 2024-2025 term. Justin will return to Harvard with ABD status in September 2025.

Justin earned his A.M. in Government at Harvard University, J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and B.A. in Political Science at Morehouse College.

Justin is based in New York, New York.