Calendar Title

2025-09-17 23:00 - 2025-09-18 00:15 UTC
A Ved Nanda Center Booktalk Webinar | Courts and LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment (https://academic.oup.com/book/59894) (Oxford University Press, 2025)

Rehan Abeyratne, Professor and Associate Dean, Western Sydney University School of Law

REGISTER (https://udenver.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9aFzY7_2RlqTLXQu0qKTRg)

Over the past two decades, liberal constitutionalism has declined, and courts have retrenched on rights protection. Yet, paradoxically, courts in the U.S., India, and Hong Kong have advanced LGBTQ+ rights amid this regression.

The book explores LGBTQ+ rights adjudication against the backdrop of declining liberal constitutionalism and judicial retrenchment in the United States, India, and Hong Kong. It examines how courts have advanced LGBTQ+ rights even as they have overturned, narrowed, or avoided other rights. In doing so, the book argues that LGBTQ+ rights adjudication stands out as a distinctive area of judicial engagement—often progressive, or at least less regressive—at a time when courts have generally been in retreat.

In this webinar, author Professor Abeyratne (https://researchers.westernsydney.edu.au/en/persons/rehan-abeyratne) will provide an overview of the book, with commentary by Professor Tim Holbrook (https://www.law.du.edu/about/people/tim-holbrook) from the Sturm College of Law and Professor Ryan Thoreson (https://law.uc.edu/faculty/directory/ryan-thoreson.html) from the Cincinnati College of Law.
