Jonathan Todres

Jonathan Todres, Distinguished University Professor and professor of law, is a leading expert on children’s rights. He has published extensively on the implementation of children’s rights law, human rights education, youth participation, human trafficking, and legal and cultural constructs of childhood.

Among his many publications, he is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Rights Law (Oxford University Press, 2020) and coauthor of Preventing Child Trafficking: A Public Health Approach (Johns Hopkins University Press 2019) and Human Rights in Children’s Literature: Imagination and the Narrative of Law (Oxford University Press, 2016). His newest book, Children’s Rights and Child Development: An Integrated Approach, co-edited with Ursula Kilkelly, will be published by New York University Press in late 2024. He is also a co-editor on the forthcoming new edition of the Children and the Law: Doctrine, Policy, and Practice textbook (8th edition, 2024, with Douglas Abrams et al.). Todres was a Fulbright Scholar in residence at University College Cork in Ireland (Spring 2018).

Todres regularly works with a number of professional associations and non-governmental organizations that address issues affecting children’s rights and child wellbeing. Todres serves as chair of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (he has been on the Board since 2017). Since 2012, he has also served on a number of committees of the National Academies including: the Planning Committee on Exploring the Power of Youth Leadership in Creating Conditions for Health and Equity (2022); the Committee on Biological and Psychosocial Effects of Peer Victimization: Lessons for Bullying Prevention (2015-2016); the Planning Committee on Increasing Capacity for Reducing Bullying and Its Impact on the Lifecourse of Youth Involved (2014), and the Committee on Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Sex Trafficking of Minors in the United States (2012-2013).

Todres served as chair of the AALS Section on International Human Rights in 2015 and chair of the AALS Section on Children and the Law in 2013. He served on the Executive Committee of international human rights section through 2023 and continues to serve on the Executive Committee on the Section on Children and the Law. Todres has also held several leadership posts within the ABA Section of International Law, including chair of the Section’s International Life Sciences and Health Law Committee and vice chair of its International Human Rights Committee. Todres is also a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Todres previously served as an acting assistant professor at New York University School of Law, an adjunct professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University and a visiting professor (Human Rights) at Vytautas Magnus University School of Law in Lithuania. He also practiced law with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and London and clerked for Judge Rosemary Barkett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Todres received his J.D. from Columbia Law School where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and his B.A. (with high honors in International Development) from Clark University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Prior to attending law school, he worked for a number of years in international development and served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand.

Todres is a member of the Center for Law, Health & Society  and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Access to Justice. At GSU, he has taught Torts, Family Law, International Human Rights, Human Rights and Children, Public Health Law, and Global Perspectives on Children and the Law.

Todres received the College of Law’s David J. Maleski Award for Teaching Excellence in 2020 and its Patricia T. Morgan Award for Outstanding Faculty Scholarship in 2019 and 2011.