Justin Hansford

Justin Hansford is an activist, lawyer, law professor, and is currently a democracy project fellow at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center. He has a B.A. from Howard University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a founder of The Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives. He joined the Saint Louis University law faculty after clerking for Judge Damon Keith on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and he has received a prestigious Fulbright Scholar award to study the legal career of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Living just 10 minutes from Ferguson, Hansford has been at the forefront of legal organizing and advocacy in the aftermath of the murder of Mike Brown. He co-authored the Ferguson to Geneva human rights shadow report and accompanied the Ferguson Protesters and Mike Brown's family to Geneva, Switzerland to testify at the United Nations. He has served as an advocate for proposed post-Ferguson reforms at the local, state, and federal, and international level, testifying before the Ferguson Commission, the Missouri Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission, the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and the Inter American Commission for Human Rights. As a result of his work in Ferguson, Hansford has been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, Time Magazine,Ebony, and the Globe and Mail, and he has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, PBS, National Public Radio other local, national, and international news outlets. He was honored by the National Bar Association as one of the Top 40 Lawyers Under 40, before he turned 30, was selected as an Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar by the Aspen Institute, and recently was named by Revolt TV as one of the 25 New Leaders of Social Justice.