Zinaida Miller
Professor of Law and International Affairs; Faculty Co-Director, Center for Global Law and Justice; Faculty Co-Director, Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy
Education
Harvard Law School, JD 2007
The Fletcher School, Tufts University, MALD 2007, PhD 2015
Bio
Professor Zinaida Miller holds a joint appointment in the School of Law and the International Affairs Program of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. She teaches courses in human rights law and in criminal justice. Along with Professor Martha Davis, she is a founding faculty co-director of the Center for Global Law & Justice.
An expert in transitional justice and international human rights, Miller’s research focuses on inequality, structural violence, and critical approaches to international law, including in Palestine/Israel, South Africa, and Rwanda. Her scholarship has been published in journals including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Transnational Legal Theory, Cornell International Law Journal, and International Criminal Law Review and in edited collections including the forthcoming Race and Transitional Justice (Oxford Univ. Press) and The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice (Oxford Univ. Press, 2025). She is co-editor of Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which explores the emphasis on punishment and prosecution in the human rights movement, particularly in states emerging from conflict. Her current scholarship investigates the relationships among temporality, rights, and justice, including the uses of the past in legal and political struggles over racial and economic inequalities.
Prior to joining Northeastern, Miller was Associate Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations, where she taught courses in public international law, international criminal law, race and international law, and human rights. She previously held a post-doctoral fellowship in global governance, funded by the Erin Jellel Collins Arsenault Trust, at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development.
Miller was co-chair of the American Society of International Law’s Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Interest Group from 2017 to 2020. She currently serves on the Advisory Council of Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law & Policy and as a faculty member of the IGLP Global Scholars Academy. Miller received her AB from Brown University, JD from Harvard Law School and her MALD and PhD in International Relations from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Fields of Expertise
- Human Rights
- International Criminal Law
- International Law
- Israel/Palestine
- Transitional Justice
Selected Works
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- Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (co-editor).
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- “The Impossible Necessity of Racial Justice in Transitional Justice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice (2024).
- “Times of Violence, Times of Justice,” included in “On international law and Gaza: critical reflections,” 12 London Review of International Law 217 (2024).
- “Talk of Genocide,” London Review of Books Blog (December 22, 2023).
- “In Gaza, Catastrophic Violence of War and Slow Violence of Oppression Collide,” Just Security (November 8, 2023).
- “Symposium on The Sentimental Life of International Law: On Intimacy and Distance,” OpinioJuris (August 23, 2023).
- “Temporal Governance: The Times of Transitional Justice,” 21 International Criminal Law Review (2021).
- “The Injustices of Time: Rights, Race, Redistribution, and Responsibility,” 52 Columbia Human Rights Law Review 647 (2021).
- “Rethinking Past and Future: Rights and Times,” Open Global Rights (July 16, 2021).
- “Embedded Ambivalence: Ungoverning Global Justice,” 11 Transnational Legal Theory 353 (2020).
- “Transitional Justice, Race, and the United States,” Just Security (June 30, 2020).
- “Time, Law, and Judgment,” 32 Temple International and Comparative Law Journal 53 (2018).
- “Perils of Parity: Palestine’s Permanent Transition,” 47 Cornell International Law Journal 331 (2014).
- “Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the ‘Economic’ in Transitional Justice,” 2 International Journal of Transitional Justice 266 (2008) [Translated to Spanish and republished as “Efectos de la Invisibilidad: En Búsqueda de lo ‘Económico’ en la Justicia Transicional,” in Perspectivas Jurídicas de las Paz 2016].
- “Radicalism and Responsibility,” 1 Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left 1 (2005) (co-author) [Translated to Italian and republished as “Il Progetto Politico e la Responsabilità Del Giurista,” 23 Rivista Critica Del Diritto Privato 355 (2005)].
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- “Haunting Justice: Racing and De-Racing through Transitional Justice.” In Race and Transitional Justice, eds. N. Jain and S. Nouwen (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
- “Transitional Justice Temporalities.” In The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice, eds. L.Douglas et al. (Oxford University Press, 2023).
- “Oscillating Justice: Between Universal and Particular.” In International Law and Universality, eds. I. Aral and J. d’Aspremont (Oxford University Press, 2024.
- “The End(s) of Transition.” In International Law and Transitional Governance, eds. M. Wiebusch and E. De Groof (Routledge Press, 2020).
- “Distributing Justice: Transitional Justice and Stabilisation in North Africa.” In Stabilising the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa, eds. V. Gervais and S. van Genugten (Springer Press, 2019).
- “Anti-Impunity Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda.” In Anti-impunity and the Human Rights Agenda, eds K. Engle et al. (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
- “Land, Law, and Planning in the Bedouin Naqab.” In Indigenous (In)Justice: Miller Human Rights Law and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab/Negev, eds. A. Amara et al. (Harvard University Press, 2012) (co-author).
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- “The Promise of Palestinian Statehood Is Ringing Hollow,” The New York Times (August 6, 2025).
- “Britain and France Have Pledged to Recognize a Palestinian State. What Would It Mean?,” The New York Times (July 29, 2025).
- “Relief and Skepticism Felt in Mass. As Israel and Hamas Reach Ceasefire,” NBC Boston (January 15, 2025).
- “European Leaders Divided on ICC Arrest Warrant Bid for Netanyahu,” Politico (May 20, 2024).
- “U.N. Court Says Israel Must Prevent Genocidal Acts in Gaza, But Doesn’t Order a Ceasefire,” TIME (January 26, 2024).
- “South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel, Explained,” Vox (January 12, 2024).
- “Can the US play peacekeeper in the Israel-Hamas war?,” Northeastern Global News (October 17, 2023).
- “‘It’s Hard To Conceive of This as Anything Other Than Like a Death March’: Local Experts Decry Forced Displacement of Gazans,” The Boston Globe (October 14, 2023).
- “War Crimes, Human Rights Concerns Spike as War Rages Between Israel and Hamas,” Northeastern Global News (October 13, 2023).
- “What about Social and Economic Rights,” Justice Visions Podcast.
Zinaida Miller
Professor of Law and International Affairs; Faculty Co-Director, Center for Global Law and Justice; Faculty Co-Director, Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy