Rehan Abeyratne is a legal scholar and educator. He serves as Professor and Director, Higher Degree Research and Honours at Western Sydney University School of Law. He currently teaches Legal Research & Methodology and Government & Public Law. His research falls broadly within the field of comparative constitutionalism, with a regional focus on Asia, and specific interests in judicial independence, socioeconomic rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Professor Abeyratne is the author of Courts and LGBTQ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment (Oxford University Press 2025) (interviews available here, here, and here). He is a co-editor of Towering Judges: A Comparative Study of Constitutional Judges (Cambridge University Press 2021), The Law and Politics of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments in Asia (Routledge 2021), and the Routledge Handbook of Asian Parliaments (Routledge 2023). He has authored articles in leading journals including the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON), Yale Journal of International Law, and Global Constitutionalism, as well as chapters in edited volumes published by Hart, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press.
Professor Abeyratne serves as an elected member of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S) Council and as co-chair of the Society’s Committee on New Directions in Scholarship. He holds editorial positions at the Asian Journal of Comparative Law (Subject Editor) and at Comparative Constitutional Studies (Special Issue Editor).
Professor Abeyratne previously held full-time academic positions at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and at Jindal Global Law School, and visiting positions at New York University School of Law, Melbourne Law School, and the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. He holds a PhD from Monash University, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a BA (Hons.) in Political Science from Brown University.
Rehan Abeyratne 