People

Kristen A. Stilt is Professor of Law and also Faculty Director, Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program and Faculty Director, Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World.

Prior to coming to HLS, Stilt was Harry R. Horrow Professor in International Law at Northwestern Law School and Professor of History at Northwestern University.

Stilt’s research focuses on Islamic law and society in both historical and contemporary contexts.  She also writes in the area of Animal Law, and the intersection of animal law and religion and culture in particular.

She was named a Carnegie Scholar for her work on constitutional Islam, and in 2013 was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.  She has also received awards from Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays.

Stilt received a JD from The University of Texas School of Law, where she was an associate editor of the Texas Law Review and co-editor-in-chief of the Texas Journal of Women in the Law. Stilt holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.

Selected Publications

• Naturalized Rights of Animals, Animalized Rights of Nature, Stanford Environmental Law Journal (2025). Co-author: Macarena Montes.
• War is Peace, International & Comparative Law Jotwell (2023).
• Estrellita the Woolly Monkey and the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court, ReVista (Feb. 10, 2023). Co-author: Macarena Montes Franceschini.
• Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals, Harvard Law Review (2021).
• Trading in Sacrifice, in Studies in Global Animal Lawe (Anne Peters ed., 2020).
• Animals in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law (Anver M. Emon and Rumee Ahmed eds., 2018).
• Hisba and Muhtasib in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law (Anver M. Emon and Rumee Ahmed eds., 2018). Co-author: M. Safa Saraçoğlu.
• Judicial Review in the Context of Constitutional Islam, in Comparative Judicial Review (Erin F. Delaney & Rosalind Dixon eds., 2018). Co-author: Salma Waheedi.
• Constitutional Innovation and Animal Protection in Egypt, Law and Social Inquiry (2018).
• Law in Critical Terms for Animal Studies (Lori Gruen ed., 2018).
• The Ambitions of Muslim Family Law Reform, Harvard Journal of Law & Gender (2018). Co-authors: Salma Waheedi and Swathi Ghandhavadi Griffin.
• Trading in Sacrifice, American Journal of International Law Unbound (2017).

• Protection and Status of Animals in Max Plank Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (2017). Co-author: Jessica Eisen.
• Contextualizing Constitutional Islam: The Malaysian Experience, International Journal of Constitutional Law (2015).
• Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes: The Egyptian Constitution of 1971 in Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (Tom Ginsburg and Alberto Simpser eds., 2014).
• Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics (Emad El-Din Shahin ed., 2014).
• “Hisba in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics (Emad El-Din Shahin ed., 2014). Co-author: Abdul Rahman I. Doi.
• Islamic Law in Action: Authority, Discretion, and Everyday Experience in Mamluk Egypt (2011).
• ‘Islam Is the Solution’: Constitutional Visions of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Texas Journal of International Law (2010).
• The End of ‘One Hand’: Th Egyptian Constitutional Declaration and the Rift Between the ‘People’ and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in Yearbook of Islamic & Middle Eastern Law Online (2010).
• Price Setting and Hoarding in Mamluk Egypt in The Law Applied: Contextualizing the Islamic Shari’a (Peri Bearman, Wolfhart Heinrichs, and Bernard Weiss eds., 2008).
• Constitutional Authority and Subversion: Egypt’s New Presidential Election System, Indiana International & Comparative Law Review (2006).
• Recognizing the Individual: The Muhtasibs of Early Mamluk Cairo and Fustat, Harvard Middle East & Islamic Review (2006).
• Islamic Law and the Making and Remaking of the Iraqi Legal System, George Washington International Law Review (2004).