Margaret Burnham

Margaret Burnham is an American lawyer, legal scholar, and author whose career has connected public service, civil rights, and historical investigation. She has served as a judge and is a University Distinguished Professor of Law at Northeastern University.

Much of her later work has focused on examining racial violence and unresolved crimes from the civil rights era. She founded and led the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern, an effort that researches cases of anti-Black killings and helps recover stories that were ignored or never fully investigated.

Her writing is known for making legal and historical questions feel urgent and human. Drawing on years of research, she explores how the justice system failed many Black Americans and why confronting that history still matters now.