Roy L. Brooks

Roy L. Brooks
Phone: (619) 260-4731
Office: Warren Hall 215
Assistant:

Brady Sisk
bsisk@SanDiego.edu

Warren Distinguished Professor of Law

  • JD, 1975, Yale University
  • BA, 1972, University of Connecticut

Roy L. Brooks, JD, is a Warren Distinguished Professor of Law who has earned the rank of University Professor twice. He is a graduate of Yale Law School where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, Professor Brooks clerked for a federal judge and practiced corporate law on Wall Street before being recruited to the university in 1979 by then-Provost, Sister Sally Furay. He was awarded tenure by the law school faculty after his second year of teaching. Professor Brooks has taught Corporations, Corporate Finance, Securities Regulation, Legal Writing, Civil Procedure, Civil Process and Employment Discrimination. Currently he teaches Jurisprudence, Civil Rights Theory, International Human Rights, Reparations and Discrimination Law & Diversity. 

A member of the American Law Institute and the Authors Guild, Roy L. Brooks has received national book awards, including the Brandeis University Library Learned Research Journal Award and two recognitions of the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. Professor Brooks has been awarded the School of Law's Thorsnes Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship (four times) and its Thorsnes Prize for Outstanding Teacher (four times).

Brooks has authored more than 20 books and has contributed to numerous journals. Some of his scholarly work includes; The Racial Glass Ceiling: Subordination in American Law and Culture (Yale); Integration of Separation? A Strategy for Racial Equality (Harvard); Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations (California); Diversity Judgments: Democratizing Judicial Legitimacy (Cambridge); When Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice (NYU); Racial Justice in the Age of Obama (Princeton).

Areas of Expertise

Civil Procedure, Civil Rights, International Human Rights, Employment and Labor Law, Employment Discrimination, Federal Courts, Jurisprudence and Legal Theory, Public Interest/Public Law and Regulation, Race and Gender Identity

Professional Experience

Brooks served as a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal, clerked for the Honorable Clifford Scott Green of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, and practiced corporate law with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City. He joined the USD School of Law faculty in 1979.

Professor Brooks teaches and writes in the areas of legal and critical theory, civil procedure, civil rights,  employment discrimination, and international human rights.

Honors and Affiliations

Brooks is a member of the American Law Institute and the Authors Guild. He has received national book awards, including the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (two times) and the Brandeis University Library Learned Research Journal Award. Professor Brooks has been awarded the Law School's Thorsnes Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship (four times) and its Thorsnes Prize for Outstanding Teaching (four times). Brooks was named a USD University Professor in 2005 and 2018. The University named the Roy L. Brooks Distinguished Lecture Series in honor of Brooks.

Scholarly Work

  • Black Boarding Academies as a Prudential Reparation: Finis Origine Pendet, 13 Columbia Journal of Race and Law 790 (2023)
  • Framing Redress Discourse, in NOMOS LXV: Reconciliation and Repair (Melissa Schwartzberg & Eric Beerbohm eds., New York University Press 2023)
  • Diversity Judgments: Democratizing Judicial Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press 2022)
  • 2021 Special Issue: Racism without Racists—Systemic Racism: Patterns of Black Disadvantage and White Advantage Linked to Slavery, 58 San Diego Law Review 767 (2021)
  • Racial Reconciliation Through Black Reparations, 63 Howard Law Journal 349 (2020)
  • The Anatomy of an Apology, 87 Social Research: An International Quarterly 813 (2020)
  • The Need, and the Difficulty, of Collective Apologies & Forgiveness (July 16), Public Seminar (2020)
  • Subordination Discourse: A Critique of Trump’s Diversity Model, 4 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law & Public Affairs 203 (2019)
  • Reparative Justice and the Post-Conflict Phase of Modern Slavery, in Contemporary Slavery: Popular Rhetoric and Political Practice (Annie Bunting & Joel Quirk eds., Yale University Press 2017)
  • Systemic Racism: Sociolegal and Sociocultural Implications, in Systemic Racism: Making Liberty, Justice, and Democracy Real (Ruth Thompson-Miller & Kimberley Ducey eds., Palgrave Macmillan 2017)
  • The Racial Glass Ceiling: Subordination in American Law and Culture (Yale University Press 2017)
  • Juridical Subordination, 52 San Diego Law Review 825 (2015) (with Smith)
  • Civil Procedure (West Academic 2014)
  • Civil Procedure Basic Concepts (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 2005)
  • Review of Civil Procedure (Spectra Publishing 1991)

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