Jonathan Todres

Jonathan Todres, distinguished university professor and professor of law, focuses his research on children’s rights and child well-being. Todres has published extensively on a range of topics including the implementation of children’s rights law; child trafficking; human rights education; legal and cultural constructs of childhood; and human rights and the social determinants of health.

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). 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 nongovernmental organizations that address issues affecting children’s rights and child wellbeing. Todres serves as a member of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Since 2012, he has also served on three committees of the National Academies: 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 continues to serve on the Executive Committee of both sections of the AALS. 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 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 teaches Family Law, Torts, 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.