Hayden Thorne

Hayden Thorne is researching the influence of lawyers in the US Supreme Court.

Qualifications

PhD in History, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2022

MA in History with Distinction, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2018

BA(Hons) with First Class Honours, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2017

LLB, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2016

BA in History, Political Science and International Relations, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2016

Profile

I completed my undergrad degrees in law and history in 2015 and found myself somewhat at a loss about what to do next. I had gone into my law degree in particular with the aim of landing a job at a big law firm, working hard and making plenty of money – chasing the law school dream, in effect. Over the course of my degree I became disillusioned with the legal profession – a view I maintain of the big firms in particular, who have a tendency to underpay and overwork young lawyers, and take advantage of their relative lack of power to line the partners’ pockets.

In any case, after much cajoling from some of the history programme staff, I stayed on to do Honours, and have never looked back. Studying American legal history combines my historical interest in the United States with the skills learnt during my law degree. Approaching the discipline as a relative outsider also gives me a quite different perspective, something that is evident in my choice of PhD topic, which explores the ability of lawyers to influence the outcomes of Supreme Court cases – an idea that is largely missing in existing scholarship.

I am a born-and-bred Wellingtonian, living in Upper Hutt with my wife and two young girls.

Supervisors

Publications

Hayden Thorne, ‘From Backlash to Backtrack: How the Supreme Court Reneged on the Promise of Furman v. Georgia’, law&history, June 2022 (forthcoming)

Hayden Thorne, ‘Clearance and the Hollywood Blacklist’, American Communist History, vol. 19, no. 1-2, 2020, pp. 51-66