Ryan Thoreson

Ryan Thoreson’s scholarship examines contemporary social movements
around gender and sexuality and spans constitutional law, comparative and
international law, and human rights law.

Thoreson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the California Law
Review, Cardozo Law Review, Harvard International Law Journal, Yale Law
Journal, and Clinical Law Review. He is a 2023 recipient of the Williams
Institute’s Dukeminier Award to recognize the best legal scholarship on
sexual orientation and gender identity and a 2024 recipient of the University
of Cincinnati’s Faculty Excellence Award.

Previously, Thoreson taught as an Assistant Professor at the University of
Hong Kong and was a Clinical Lecturer and Cover-Lowenstein Fellow at Yale
Law School. Prior to entering academia, he was a researcher at Human
Rights Watch and clerked on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Thoreson received his J.D. from Yale, where he was Executive Editor of the
Yale Law Journal and Managing Editor of the Yale Journal of Law and
Feminism. A Rhodes scholar, he also holds a D.Phil. in Anthropology from
Oxford and an A.B. magna cum laude in Government and Studies of Women,
Gender, and Sexuality from Harvard University.

• JD, Yale Law School
• DPhil, Oxford University
• AB, Harvard University

Dignifying Queerness, forthcoming in the Cardozo Law Review (2024).

Integrating Human Rights in Domestic Clinical Practice, 30 Clin. L. Rev. 345 (2024), with Tamar Ezer, Elizabeth Brundige & Aya Fujimura-Fanselow. 

“Discriminalization”: Sexuality, Human Rights, and the Carceral Turn in Antidiscrimination Law, 110 Calif. L. Rev. 431 (2022). 

The Limits of Moral Limitations: Reconceptualizing “Morals” in Human Rights Law, 59 Harv. Int’l L.J. 197 (2018). 

From Child Protection to Children’s Rights: Rethinking Homosexual Propaganda Bans in Human Rights Law, 124 Yale L.J. 1327 (2015).