Land Use, Zoning & Real Property Law Professor

Specialties & Experience of this Expert Witness

Additional Information

STEPHEN R. MILLER is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for the Part-Time J.D. Program at Northern Illinois University College of Law in the Chicago suburb of DeKalb, Illinois. He previously taught for thirteen years (2011-2024) at the University of Idaho College of Law’s Boise campus where he also served as the law school’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development. Professor Miller is a nationally-recognized expert on land use planning law, state and local government law, and property law. His books include The Advanced Introduction to U.S. Land Use Law, Federal Land Use Law & Litigation, Discretionary Land Use Controls, and Land Use Planning and Development Regulation Law (co-authored). He also served as editor-in-chief and senior editor of the American Bar Association’s Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law, and presently serves on the Journal’s editorial board. In addition, he has published over sixty law review articles, professional articles, and editorials on land use and real property topics. He remains actively involved in land use disputes and resolutions. He has served as an expert witness on land use and property-related matters in cases pending before federal district courts and federal bankruptcy courts. He is actively licensed to practice law in California and Illinois. He has also served as secretary of both the Property section and the State & Local Government Section of the Association of American Law Schools. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Real Estate Lawyers (ACREL). Professor Miller has received a number of grants for his work from international, federal and state agencies including the U.S. Forest Service; the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (sub-grant); the Center for Advanced Energy Studies at Idaho National Laboratories; the Idaho Department of Lands; and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France. His courses have included Property, Land Use Law, Housing Law, Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Real Estate Transactions, and State and Local Government Law. He also taught an Economic Development Clinic at the University of Idaho College of Law for six years. A popular professor, his classroom teaching has received several notable awards. In 2021, he received the University of Idaho Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning’s Teaching Innovation Award for course design. He has twice been voted Outstanding Faculty Advisor of the Year by the Idaho Law Review and received the Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence in 2013. He holds an undergraduate degree magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University; a J.D. from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly U.C. Hastings College of the Law); a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley; and a master’s degree in fiction writing from Boise State University. At U.C. Berkeley, he received the Tommy Church Prize, a prestigious annual competition to resolve a problem in the landscape of the American West that, in the year he won focused on land conservation in the California Delta. At Brown, Professor Miller was student director of the Rose Writing Fellows Program, then one of the leading interdisciplinary writing programs in the country. He also received the Dean of the College Travel Fellowship for research in India and several senior writing prizes. He is active in land use affairs in his community. He previously served on Boise’s Planning & Zoning Commission, as well as on the board of his neighborhood association. He currently served on the Housing Commission in Wilmette, Illinois.