Justin L. Brooks is a lawyer, writer, and PhD candidate in Government specializing in political philosophy at Harvard University. His scholarship sits at the intersection of criminal law, political theory, and Black intellectual history. His research begins from the premise that racial domination is a structural rather than episodic feature of American constitutional democracy. Consequently, he investigates how the criminal legal apparatus and the federal judiciary sustain racial stratification, while analyzing how marginalized communities cultivate strategies of political resistance and ethical struggle in response.

Justin's dissertation reconstructs the political and legal thought of Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Departing from conventional readings that confine Bell to critical race theory and the legal realist tradition, the project establishes Bell as a canonical political theorist and existential ethicist of the American racial state. His work ultimately theorizes how advocates and marginalized communities sustain moral agency without relying on teleological promises of democratic reform.

Justin is the recipient of the Harold Laski Fellowship and Presidential Scholarship at Harvard University. In 2025, he was awarded the Christian Bay Award by the American Political Science Association. His public-facing writing and legal commentary have appeared in The Appeal, The American Prospect, Truthout, and Slate, and he was featured in the A&E documentary Exposing Parchman (2023). He previously served as a federal law clerk on both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the Second Circuit. 

Justin holds a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law, an A.M. from Harvard University, and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Morehouse College. 

He lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.