Courts and LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment
A Ved Nanda Center Booktalk Webinar
Join the Ved Nanda Center as author Rehan Abeyratne discusses his recently published Courts and LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment, Oxford University Press 2025.
In this webinar, Professor Abeyratne will provide an overview of the book, with commentary by Professor Tim Holbrook from the Sturm College of Law and Professor Ryan Thoreson from the Cincinnati College of Law.
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.
About the Author
Rehan Abeyratne is Professor and Associate Dean (Higher Degree Research) at Western Sydney University School of Law. He specializes in comparative constitutionalism in Asia, with a focus on judicial independence, socioeconomic rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
He is the author of Courts and LGBTQ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment (Oxford University Press, 2025) and co-editor of Towering Judges (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Professor Abeyratne has held appointments at NYU, Melbourne Law School, and NUS, and serves on the ICON-S Council and editorial boards of leading constitutional law journals.
