Roy L. Brooks

Roy Lavon Brooks (born 1950) is an American legal scholar who served as Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and was named a University Professor twice at the University of San Diego School of Law. Brooks is a specialist in civil rights law, legal theory, critical theory, post-conflict justice, and reparations for slavery. He has authored or edited more than 20 books. Brooks is known for framing diverse post-civil rights approaches to social justice, for developing the "atonement model" for reparations, for framing critical theory as a general theory of law and incorporating it into the Supreme Court's deliberative process, and for his role as a founding member of the Critical Race Theory movement.

In 2025, Brooks announced his retirement from the University of San Diego School of Law after 47 years on the faculty. He was the first Black professor at the university, having been recruited in 1979 by Provost Sister Sally Furey, who traveled to New York to persuade him to leave his position at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. The university established the Roy L. Brooks Distinguished Lecture Series in 2023.

Early life and education Brooks was born in 1950 in New Haven, Connecticut, a few miles from Yale University.

Academic career Brooks joined the University of San Diego School of Law faculty in 1979, becoming the institution's first tenured Black professor. He received tenure after only his second year of teaching.

In 1995, Brooks was one of two professors named the first Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, the highest honor the law school confers for excellence in scholarship. In 2005 and again in 2018, Brooks was named University Professor, the highest honor bestowed university-wide by USD for "outstanding scholarly achievement." The university established the Roy L. Brooks Distinguished Lecture Series in his honor in 2023.

Brooks is a member of the Authors Guild and holds a Lifetime Membership in the American Law Institute.

Work and research

Social justice framings Brooks often uses the "Black Table" at Yale Law School, where law students gathered in the 1970s to discuss diverse perspectives on social justice issues, especially racial justice, as a metaphor for the intellectual rigor and respectful disagreement that Brooks advocates in many of his works. Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree called Brooks’ social justice scholarship "powerful, thorough, and compelling." University of Virginia Professor Alex M. Johnson wrote that "it will revise how the debate on race is addressed." His 2004 book Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations introduced the "atonement model," which combines formal apology, reparations, and forgiveness as interdependent elements of racial reconciliation. The model posits that "If racial reconciliation is the goal of redressing slavery, then redress must be atonement (apology and reparation) plus forgiveness. With a genuine apology and substantial reparations, the matter of forgiveness arrives on the victims’ desk as a civic subpoena that must be answered." Yale Law School Professor Emeritus Boris I. Bittker praised the work, stating it "will certainly become the standard examination of the issue." Since Brooks emerged, it has become standard practice in the United States to seek an apology from the perpetrator rather than merely requesting reparations.

Influence on climate justice scholarship His atonement model has influenced contemporary debates beyond traditional reparations discourse. Legal scholar Carlton Waterhouse, in his 2025 article "Climate Redress Revisited," extensively applies Brooks' theoretical framework to climate justice issues. Waterhouse notes that Brooks "maintains that reparations require remorse and the intent to atone," with atonement including "remorse for the wrongs committed, coupled with a desire to communicate that remorse to the moral community and to engage in behavior that resets the moral relationship." Waterhouse also emphasizes that under Brooks' model, "apology and subsequent remedial action demonstrate the legitimacy of the apology," requiring substantive compensation beyond mere acknowledgment.

Critical Race Theory Brooks helped plan and participated in the 1985 conference that contributed to the launch of Critical Race Theory. Working alongside Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Charles Lawrence, Rachel Moran, and Nerissa Skillman, Brooks helped shape the movement's foundational concepts. In 1987 and 1988, Brooks further advanced his analysis by identifying the subordinating mechanism within civil rights law as "formal equal opportunity," which he defined as the interplay between two potentially conflicting norms—"racial integration and racial omission." In addition, rather than focusing on how traditional civil rights law subordinates African Americans writ large, as most critical race theorists still proceed, Brooks’ analysis was more sensitive to class stratification within the post-civil rights African American community. Thus, Brooks extended the analysis of the subordination question—"the notion that civil rights doctrine, practices, and policy give low or no priority to matters of keen interest to African Americans or otherwise call upon Black Americans to endure a disproportionate share of societal hardships"— beyond the prevailing discourse by connecting it to class. Brooks showed how formal equal opportunity subordinated the Black middle class, working class, and poverty class differently.

Critical Theory Brooks defines "Critical Theory" as the amalgamation of Critical Race Theory, Critical Feminist Theory, LatCrit Theory, and other oppositional, or outsider, theories that challenge traditional legal thinking. Brooks’ analysis focuses on "hard cases," which are cases that raise socially significant, polycentric issues such as abortion, the Second Amendment, and affirmative action. Brooks was the first to demonstrate how Critical Theory can operate as a general theory of law. He argued that Critical Theory counts as legal theory because it has a cognitive dimension, which reveals things one would not otherwise notice; a constructive dimension, which offers reforms; and a critical dimension, which explains why its view of the world is superior to others'. Legal scholars continue to refer to Brooks's work as "groundbreaking" more than three decades after it first appeared.

Legal Theory Brooks has argued that a more inclusive deliberative process is essential to improving the Supreme Court's legitimacy in our diverse society. He advocates adding "critical process" to "traditional process," the Supreme Court's conventional decision-making process. Brooks creates critical process by transforming critical theory from a critique of law into a framework for judicial decision-making. He breaks down both processes into their diverse approaches—positivism, pragmatism, and nominalism for traditional process, and symmetrical, asymmetrical, and hybrid for critical process—and then applies them to dozens of Supreme Court cases. Dean Kevin R. Johnson calls Brooks' work "magisterial," and Professor Joe Feagin writes that it is "dazzling and original work."

Legal practice and advocacy Beyond academia, Brooks has engaged in significant legal advocacy. In 1999, he articulated concerns about the political viability of reparations. He acknowledged that "in the end, the most important question [concerning African American claims for redress] is whether the average African American citizen cares enough about redress to make it a political issue." Brooks later participated in high-profile advocacy efforts, including when: He worked on a reparations complaint for victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre alongside Charles Ogletree and Johnnie Cochran

Selected publications

Selected books Diversity Judgments: Democratizing Judicial Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press, 2022) The Law of Discrimination: Cases and Perspectives (casebook, multiple editions, 2011) The Racial Glass Ceiling: Subordination in American Law and Culture (Yale University Press, 2017) Racial Justice in the Age of Obama (Princeton University Press, 2009) Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations (University of California Press, 2004) When Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice (editor, NYU Press, 1999) In this edited volume, Brooks introduces "The Age of Apology" concept, analyzing global patterns of state acknowledgment for historical wrongs. Integration or Separation?: A Strategy for Racial Equality (Harvard University Press, 1996) Rethinking the American Race Problem (University of California Press, 1990)

Selected book chapters and articles Brooks, Roy L. "Holocaust Redress: Its Effect on Slave Redress and Post-Conflict Justice." Redefining Reparations, edited by Lorena De Vita and Constantin Goschler (London: Routledge, 2025). Brooks, Roy L. "Framing Redress Discourse" in NOMOS LXV: Reconciliation and Repair, edited by Melissa Schwartzberg and Eric Beerbohm (New York: NYU Press, 2023). Brooks, Roy L. "Black boarding academies as a prudential reparation: finis origine pendet." Colum. J. Race & L. 13 (2023): 790. "The Anatomy of an Apology." Social Research: An International Quarterly. 87 (2020): 813. Brooks, Roy L. "Systemic Racism: Sociolegal and Sociocultural Implications." In Systemic Racism: Making Liberty, Justice, and Democracy Real, pp. 143–161. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US (2017). Brooks, Roy L. "Cultural diversity: It's all about the mainstream." The Monist 95, no. 1 (2012): 17–32. Brooks, Roy L., and Kirsten Widner. "In defense of the black/white binary: Reclaiming a tradition of civil rights scholarship." Berkeley J. Afr.-Am. L. & Pol'y 12 (2010): 107. Brooks, Roy L. "Making the case for atonement in post-racial America." J. Gender Race & Just. 14 (2010): 665. Brooks, Roy L. "Getting reparations for slavery right: Response to Posner and Vermeule." Notre Dame L. Rev. 80 (2004): 251. Brooks, Roy L. "The age of apology." When sorry isn't enough: The controversy over apologies and reparations for human injustice (1999): 3–12. Brooks, Roy L. "Critical race theory: A proposed structure and application to federal pleading." Harv. BlackLetter LJ 11 (1994): 85. Brooks, Roy L., and Mary Jo Newborn. "Critical race theory and classical-liberal civil rights scholarship: A distinction without a difference." Cal L. Rev. 82 (1994): 787.

Awards and honors Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (twice) Brandeis University Library Learned Research Journal Award Thurgood Marshall Award Virgil Hawkins Award USD Thorsnes Prize for Excellence in Scholarship (four times) USD Thorsnes Prize for Excellence in Teaching (four times) USD Diversity and Inclusion Impact Award (2023)