Neha Jain: A Global Career in International Law

From law school in India to a Rhodes Scholarship in Oxford, from fellowships in South Africa and Germany to faculty positions at University of Minnesota Law School and the European University Institute, to her current permanent visiting professorship at the University of Copenhagen, Professor Neha Jain arrived at Northwestern University in 2023 with a career spanning disciplines and continents. Having held research, teaching, and visiting positions at nearly a dozen institutions around the world, she now holds a joint appointment as professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and deputy director and faculty fellow at the Roberta Buffet Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern. Across both campuses and throughout her career, she has centered a commitment to fostering dialogue and engagement in the international law community.

Growing up in small-town India, Jain took what she describes as a “meandering path” to the law. “I grew up…in a time and place where the law was not considered a natural or desirable career path for the average middle class person. No one in my family was an academic or a lawyer,” she said. At 15, with encouragement from her family, teachers, and friends, Jain persuaded her parents to let her attend boarding school 42 hours away by train. “That boarding school changed my life,” Jain said. “It introduced me to thinkers and mentors from all over India and from all walks of life. It is there that I encountered the idea of the law as a profession where a love of language mattered and where order could still be found in the chaos of Indian life.”

Once she decided to pursue a law degree at the National Law School of India University, Jain developed an interest in international law while participating in India’s “notoriously competitive but highly stimulating moot court.”  During and after law school, she worked on myriad international law issues at internships and while clerking for the then Chief Justice of India’s Supreme Court. A Rhodes Scholarship then took her to Oxford for a graduate degree in international law. The scholarship, which Jain describes as the opportunity of a lifetime, launched an academic career recognized through multiple awards and prestigious fellowships.  These include fellowship positions at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge, the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa, and the Field of Excellence “Dimensions of Europe” at the University of Graz. 

Jain’s path eventually led to Northwestern University, where her joint appointments at the Buffet Institute and Northwestern Pritzker Law have allowed her to pursue policy work, research, and teaching not only at the Law School but across the university. “I have benefited hugely from the intellectual environment, conversations, friendships, and activities in both Chicago and Evanston,” said Jain. Her work at each institution informs the other, reflecting an interdisciplinary approach that allows for important collaboration.

At the Buffet Institute, a hub for global engagement across Northwestern’s twelve schools, Jain helps guide strategic priorities and builds relationships with external stakeholders both in Chicago and around the world, “to bring the university’s policy-relevant international research to bear on the urgent problems of our time.”

For Jain, this interdisciplinary, global focus “dovetails beautifully” with her research and teaching at the Law School, where she teaches courses on international law and international human rights law. “International law is sometimes dismissed as an abstract discipline that has little bearing on the everyday life of individuals around the world, and is therefore of limited value to the average lawyer who does not have global professional ambitions,” said Jain. “But what the past few years have made abundantly clear is that our daily lives are deeply intertwined with the rules, vocabulary and discourse of international law, whether we are talking about a global pandemic, climate change, tariff policy, or geopolitical conflict.” She describes teaching the courses during such a volatile period as challenging yet rewarding, engaging students to analyze the ways international law mediates tensions between different political projects,” as well as its role in “enabling or, conversely, acting as a check on state behaviour.”  

Jain’s own research delves into similar issues. Her scholarship touches on multiple aspects of international criminal law, including interrogating the authority and legitimacy of international criminal courts as well as the international law of mobility, citizenship, and statelessness. One of her most prolific articles, Manufacturing Statelessness, highlights the ways in which states practice “discrimination in disguise” to exclude certain groups from citizenship. “My research identifies laws, techniques, and practices through which states manipulate facially neutral criteria that are not traditionally considered as ‘suspect’ classifications for the grant or denial of political membership: time, territory, and administrative practice,” she said. This work, which has profound implications for international organizations, courts, and policymakers, was awarded the Francis Deák Prize, the American Journal of International Law’s highest academic award.

In Refugee Markets, published this year, Jain draws attention to a nascent trend in international refugee policy that she terms “marketization,” or the extension of the market metaphor to asylum. This phenomenon refers to policies through which Global South states agree to receive refugees from states in the Global North in exchange for cash, commodities, financial aid, military equipment, or other goods. “These policies have two kinds of corrosive effects,” Jain said. “Transactional migration management schemes exacerbate the inequitable allocation of responsibility for refugee protection…They also result in the commodification of refugees as widgets to be warehoused and distributed around the world.” Through identifying this trend and its troubling effects, Jain’s article also advocates for ways in which international advocates, litigants, scholars, and judges might use preexisting laws and policies to challenge the commodification of asylum seekers. 

Whether through research, teaching, or relationship-building across campuses, Professor Jain remains dedicated to creating avenues of dialogue around international law and to mentoring the next generation of scholars. “I consider it vital to identify and promote promising students and junior scholars who might become future members of the academy, and who often lack opportunities to come into contact with potential mentors,” she said. This dedication is reflected in the multiple leadership positions she has held not only at Northwestern University but throughout the international law community. She served as Vice President of the European Society of International Law from 2022 to 2024, and is currently the co-Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law, the pre-eminent peer reviewed journal in international law. With experience gathered from around the world, Jain brings a vital perspective on international law to Northwestern Pritzker Law, fostering an environment in which students might consider the very real ways international law will affect their future practice.