Mary Anne Franks

Mary Anne Franks, is a Professor of Law and Dean’s Distinguished Scholar, teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law, Second Amendment law, family law, and Law, Policy, and Technology at the University of Miami School of Law. Professor Franks is also an Affiliated Faculty member of the University of Miami Department of Philosophy. She also serves as the President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating online abuse and discrimination. Professor Franks is the author of The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019). Her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. She has also authored numerous articles for the popular press, including the Atlantic, the Guardian, and TIME Magazine. Professor Franks has delivered more than a hundred lectures to a range of audiences in the U.S. and internationally, including law schools, domestic violence organizations, law firms, and tech companies. Professor Franks was named a member of the American Law Institute in October 2018 and is an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP). In 2013, Professor Franks drafted the first model criminal statute on nonconsensual pornography (sometimes referred to as “revenge porn”), which has been used as the template for multiple state laws and for pending federal legislation on the issue. She also served as the reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s 2018 Uniform Civil Remedies for the Unauthorized Disclosure of Intimate Images Act. She regularly advises legislators and tech industry leaders, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft, on issues relating to online privacy, extortion, harassment, and threats. Professor Franks holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a doctorate and master’s degree from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Dr. Franks previously taught at the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law and at Harvard University as a lecturer in social studies and philosophy.