Nila Bala

Nila Bala is a scholar of children’s rights, criminal law, and evidence. Her work examines how law structures childhood, particularly through criminal law, emerging technologies, and systems of surveillance and punishment. At King Hall, she teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, and Children and the Law.

Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in leading journals, including the Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review Online, Washington University Law Review, and Boston College Law Review. Her work has been selected for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum and the University of Michigan Junior Scholars Conference. In 2025, her article Policing Children’s Data received the Ian Kerr Best Paper Prize at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference. In 2024, she was named a UC Davis Public Scholarship Faculty Fellow. She also writes for broader audiences, with essays published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Slate, and Newsweek.

Prior to entering academia, Bala worked in public defense and criminal justice reform. She served as Director of Legislative Initiatives at the Policing Project at NYU School of Law and previously led criminal justice policy initiatives at the R Street Institute. She began her legal career as an Assistant Public Defender in Baltimore, Maryland, representing more than 1,000 clients and helping to lead a bail reform project. She clerked for Judge Keith P. Ellison of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. She is also a former preschool teacher.

Bala holds a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University, graduating with distinction, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.