SJD (University of Toronto), LLM (Hebrew University), LLB (Haifa University)
Dr. Miriam Zucker is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies and the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. Dr. Zucker’s research concerns the areas of Multiculturalism and Feminism, Law and Religion, and Human Rights Law. She is the recipient of the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (2021).
Dr. Zucker holds a doctorate in law from the University of Toronto, where she also mentored new LLM students in their research as an SJD Advisor. She received her LLB degree (magna cum laude) from Haifa University and her LLM degree in Public and International Law (magna cum laude) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she also taught Administrative Law. At the Hebrew University, she was awarded a prize for excellence, as well as a prize in the field of Philosophy of Law for her work on the judicial review of cases that deal with sex segregation practices within Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel.
Dr. Zucker’s doctoral work focuses on the problem of minority women’s intra-group vulnerability, often described as the treatment of “minorities within minorities.” Her work reveals significant gaps in the theoretical literature on this problem by examining the ways in which Western democracies – including Israel, the US, Canada, and the UK – have responded to polygamy and forced marriage practices among cultural minority communities. To overcome these gaps, she develops a new approach, based on her critical analysis, for addressing intra-group vulnerabilities by suggesting alternatives to criminalization and by offering innovative strategies that promote equal access for minority women to welfare assistance, protections against domestic violence, and justice in family law. Dr. Zucker has presented different portions of her work at academic conferences in Canada, the United States, and Israel. Her article on the issue of intra-group vulnerability was recently published in the Columbia Journal of Gender & Law, and her article entitled “Between Intra-Group Vulnerability and Inter-Group Vulnerability: Bridging the Gaps in the Theoretical Scholarship on Internal Minorities” is forthcoming in Inter Gentes: The McGill Journal of International Law & Legal Pluralism (2022).
Before she began her doctoral studies, Dr. Zucker practiced law at the Israeli State Attorney’s Office, where she prepared civil suits and supervised the handling of cases that had been transferred by the State Attorney to external lawyers. After her call to the Israeli Bar (and before joining the State Attorney’s Office), she served as a law clerk to the Honourable Judge Noam at the Jerusalem District Court, where she handled criminal and administrative cases in first instance, as well as civil appeals.