Arthur R. Miller
Arthur R. Miller (born June 22, 1934) is an American legal scholar known for civil procedure and his work in copyright law, unfair competition law, and sports law. He is a University Professor at New York University School of Law and chairs NYU’s Sports & Society Program. He taught at Harvard Law School from 1971 to 2007 and previously worked at Michigan, Minnesota, and Columbia Law School, where he directed the Project on International Procedure.
Miller was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father Murray Miller was a lawyer and his mother Mary was a legal secretary. He earned a BA with high honors from the University of Rochester in 1955 and a magna cum laude LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1958. After law school, he practiced at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton for three years, then joined Columbia Law School in 1961 as director of its Project on International Procedure.
A prolific author, Miller coauthored Federal Practice and Procedure with Charles Alan Wright, a landmark multi-volume reference. He has written more than 40 books and numerous articles, including The Assault on Privacy: Computers, Data Banks, and Dossiers (1971); Civil Procedure: Cases and Materials; Federal Practice and Procedure; and Intellectual Property: Patents, Trademarks and Copyright in a Nutshell.
Beyond teaching and writing, Miller has been active in media and public policy. In 1999 he made videotaped lectures for Concord Law School. He hosted Miller’s Court, a public-affairs program, from 1979 to 1988. He was the on-air legal editor for ABC’s Good Morning America for twenty years and contributed to the Discovery Channel’s Justice Files. He also moderated Hypotheticals, public-policy dialogues on BBC and Granada TV, for which he won an Emmy.
In 2008 he became Special Counsel to Milberg LLP, heading the appellate practice and arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, and participating in Pfizer, Inc. v. Abdullahi; Milberg also played a key role in Merck & Co. v. Reynolds. In 2013 he joined the Lanier Law Firm as Of Counsel.
Miller has received many honors, including eight honorary doctorates and American Bar Association Gavel Awards, plus a Special Recognition Gavel Award. In 2011 he was made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for donating more than 1,800 Japanese woodblock prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi to the British Museum; exhibitions of these prints were held at the Royal Academy in 2009 and at the Japan Society in New York in 2010.
Miller has mentored many students, including Chief Justice John Roberts, former Governor Eliot Spitzer, and Senator Russ Feingold. He is a noted collector of Kuniyoshi prints.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 14:28 (CET).