Courts and LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment

A Ved Nanda Center Booktalk Webinar | Courts and LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment (Oxford University Press, 2025)

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

REGISTER

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 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.