Amelia Thorn
Assistant Director, Bolch Judicial Institute

Amelia Ashton Thorn serves as assistant director at the Bolch Judicial Institute and senior lecturing fellow at the Duke University School of Law. She designs educational programming for state and federal judges and serves as the articles editor for Judicature, the Institute’s scholarly journal about the administration of justice. She also leads the Institute’s trauma-informed courts project, lecturing nationally and internationally on how court personnel can improve their systems. She served as the principal investigator for one of the first court observation studies examining the use of a wide range of trauma-informed practices and how those practices relate to youth outcomes.

Professor Thorn clerked for Justice Don R. Willett of the Texas Supreme Court (now of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit) as well as for Judge Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She subsequently worked as an associate at Williams & Connolly and Crowell & Moring, as well as an assistant general counsel at the American Chemistry Council, one of the nation’s oldest and largest trade associations. Prior to law school, Professor Thorn worked as a writer and editor, including acting as editor-in-chief for a magazine with a circulation of more than 70,000. She graduated magna cum laude from Duke Law and received her Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University with university distinction and departmental honors. She has been published in law reviews, magazines, and poetry journals.

Amelia Thorn portrait

Recent Courses

Bolch Institute