Mary Anne Franks

Mary Anne Franks is an American legal scholar, author, activist, and media commentator. She is a professor of law and the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at George Washington University Law School, where her areas of expertise and teaching include First Amendment law, Second Amendment law, criminal law, criminal procedure, family law, and law and technology. She also serves as president and Legislative and Technology Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington University Law School, Franks was the Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair and Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law.

Franks is the author of The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech, which won a gold medal at the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards as well as the 2020 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Legal Studies and Excellence in Social Sciences. Her second book, Fearless Speech, was published in 2024.

Early life and education Mary Anne Franks was born in Indiana on September 27, 1977 to Kang Tu-Kwei, a Taiwanese woman, and Jesse Franks, an American World War II veteran who died when Mary was two years old.

After her father's death, Franks spent most of her childhood in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a location that Franks described as "not the most racially sensitive place." She attended Loyola University New Orleans, where she graduated with highest honors in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and English literature with a minor in classics.

She was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1998. Her examination field of continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, gender theory, and political theory culminated in her doctoral thesis, "Enjoying Women: Sex, Psychoanalysis, and the Political."

In 2007, Franks graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served as senior executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender and executive editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. During her time in law school, she received several awards, including the Harvard Law School Association Alumnae Fellowship, Reginald Lewis International Internship, the Chayes International Public Service Fellow in 2005, and the National Association of Women Lawyers Outstanding Law School Student Award in 2007. In 2019, Franks was recognized as a Dean's Distinguished Scholar for the Profession, an honor bestowed upon University of Miami School of Law faculty members whose scholarly contributions to the legal profession are deemed significant and influential. In 2021, she was appointed to the Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair "to recognize her substantial contributions and ongoing accomplishments in scholarship and advocacy at the confluence of civil rights and technology."

In 2023, Franks joined the faculty of George Washington University Law School as the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law. She was a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. As a frequent legal commentator in the media on cyberlaw and criminal law issues, Franks has been quoted in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker, and she has appeared on CNN, the Today show, and Vice News.

Franks's work in advocating for legislative, technological, and social reform on the issue of nonconsensual pornography ("revenge porn") has been instrumental in drafting recent state legislation against the practice in the United States. She has worked with Congresswoman Jackie Speier on a federal criminal bill, the Intimate Privacy Protection Act (IPPA), which evolved into the ENOUGH Act, and again into the SHIELD Act. The SHIELD Act is now part of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2021, which the United States House of Representatives passed with bipartisan support in March 2021. Franks also advises major tech companies on their privacy and abuse policies. In 2015, several major tech companies, most notably Google, announced that they would be adding sexually explicit images published without consent to their privacy and removal policies. In 2014, Franks was named one of "The Heroes in the Fight to Save the Internet" by The Daily Dot.

Personal life Franks is Taiwanese American.

In addition to her work in legal scholarship and activism, she is an instructor in Krav Maga, a self-defense system developed for the military in Israel.

In her book, The Cult of the Constitution, she has characterized devotees to the free speech clause of the First Amendment and to the right to own and bear arms in the Second Amendment as members of a "cult".

Selected works

Articles

Academic Scholarship