Mary Anne Franks

Mary Anne Franks is an American legal scholar, author, activist, and media commentator. She is a professor of law and Dean's Distinguished Scholar at the University of Miami School of Law, where she teaches family law, criminal law, criminal procedure, and First Amendment law, and she serves as both president and legislative & tech policy director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.[1] Her scholarly work focuses on online harassment, free speech, discrimination, and violence. Franks also writes for various news media outlets, including The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Independent, and the Daily Dot. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.[2] 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 the Today show, HuffPost Live, and Al Jazeera America.[3] Franks is a co-producer of the 2015 film Hot Girls Wanted, a documentary produced by the actress Rashida Jones that examines the "professional amateur" porn industry.[4][5]

Mary Anne Franks
Born (1977-09-27) September 27, 1977
Alma materLoyola University New Orleans (BA)
Oxford University (MPhil, DPhil)
Harvard University (JD)
EmployerUniversity of Miami School of Law
OrganizationCyber Civil Rights Initiative
Notable work
The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019)

Franks is noted for her work advocating for legislative, technological, and social reform on the issue of nonconsensual pornography ("revenge porn"). She has been instrumental in drafting recent state legislation against the practice in the United States.[6] She is working with Congresswoman Jackie Speier on a federal criminal bill, the Intimate Privacy Protection Act.[7] Franks also advises major tech companies on their privacy and abuse policies.[8] In 2015, several major tech companies, most notably Google,[9] announced that they would be adding sexually explicit images published without consent to their privacy and removal policies.[10] In 2014, Franks was named one of "The Heroes in the Fight to Save the Internet" by the Daily Dot.[11]

Franks is an instructor in Krav Maga, a self-defense system developed for the military in Israel.[6][12]

Early Life and Education

Although she was born in Indiana, Franks mainly considers herself a native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where she resided for the vast majority of her childhood.[13] She attended Loyola University New Orleans and majored in philosophy and English literature, with a classics minor.[14] In addition to serving as president of Loyola's philosophy society and editor-in-chief of both its literary magazine and philosophy journal, Franks won several awards and scholarships for her writing, including the Loyola University Ignatian Scholarship, a Dawson Gaillard Award for Excellence in Writing, and finalist recognition in the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest.[14] Recognizing her academic promise, then-dean of arts and sciences Frank E. Scully encouraged Franks to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship, which she was successfully awarded in December 1998.[14] Franks graduated summa cum laude from Loyola with her BA in May 1999 and enrolled at Oxford University that autumn, earning her MPhil in European literature, with distinction, in June 2001 and her DPhil in modern languages and literature in January 2004.[15] 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."[15][16] Franks then went on to earn her JD 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 law school career, she also received awards including the Harvard Law School Association Alumnae Fellowship, Reginald Lewis International Internship, and Chayes International Public Service Fellow in 2005, as well as the National Association of Women Lawyers Outstanding Law School Student Award in 2007.[15] Franks graduated cum laude in 2007.[15]

Career

Between 2004 and 2005, Franks taught courses in ethics, world religions, and introductory philosophy within the Department of Humanities at Quincy College, Massachusetts. During her time at Harvard Law School, Franks clerked for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court the summer after her 1L year and at Debevoise & Plimpton the summer after her 2L year. She also worked from 2005 to 2008 as a lecturer for the Department of Social Studies and as a teaching fellow for the government, philosophy, and English departments. From 2008 to 2010, she was a Bigelow Fellow and lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School as well as a faculty affiliate for the Center for Gender Studies. In 2013, she served as a visiting professor at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, and during the summer of 2018, she taught a course on cybercrime for New York Law School's summer abroad program in London.[1][17]

Since 2014, Franks has worked in various capacities with the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), a nonprofit organization that seeks to combat cyber harassment, nonconsenual pornography, and online abuse through legislation, tech policy reform, and victim support: she served as CCRI's vice president from 2014 to 2018 and succeeded CCRI founder Holly Jacobs as president in 2018. In addition to her consecutive terms of vice presidency and presidency, she has maintained the title of Legislative & Tech Policy Director since 2014.

Franks has been teaching law courses at the University of Miami School of Law since 2010. Between 2010 and 2015, Franks served as an Associate Professor of Law and was promoted to a Professor of Law in 2015. In 2019, Franks was recognized as a Dean's Distinguished Scholar for the Profession, an honor bestowed upon law faculty members whose scholarly contributions to the legal profession are significant and influential.

Mary Anne Franks speaks at the Internet Education Foundation in 2014

Selected works
Articles
Academic Scholarship

References
  1. "Mary Anne Franks". law.miami.edu. University of Miami School of Law.
  2. "Huffington Post". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  3. "Mary Anne Franks - Media". Moving Targets. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  4. "IMDb entry for Hot Girls Wanted". IMDb.com. IMDb. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  5. Jones, Rashida. "Can a Feminist Like Porn?". Glamour.com. Glamour. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
  6. "Meet the Krav Maga-fighting law professor behind U.S. revenge porn laws". The Daily Dot. 2014-04-15.
  7. O'Hara, Mary Emily. "A federal revenge-porn bill is expected next month". Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  8. Roy, Jessica (24 June 2015). "How Tech Companies are Fighting Revenge Porn - and Winning". New York Magazine. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  9. Kelly, Heather (19 June 2015). "Google bans revenge porn". CNN. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  10. Brown, Kristen V. "Why did it take so long so ban revenge porn?". Fusion. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  11. Collier, Kevin (2014-12-21). "The heroes in the fight to save the Internet". Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  12. Jeffers, Jason Fitzroy. "Local Law Professor Promotes Self Defense". Ocean Drive.
  13. "Mary Anne Franks Profile". The Rhodes Project. Retrieved 2020-11-19.
  14. "Loyola student awarded Rhodes scholarship - Loyola University New Orleans". www.loyno.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-19.
  15. "Box". miami.app.box.com. Retrieved 2020-11-19.
  16. Franks, Mary Anne (2003-07-15). "Enjoying Women: Sex, Psychoanalysis, and the Political". Rochester, NY. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. "Profile with Mary Anne Franks". rhodesproject.com. Rhodes Project.
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