Mary Anne Franks
Mary Anne Franks is an American legal scholar, author, activist, and media commentator. She is professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law, where she teaches family law, criminal law, criminal procedure, and First Amendment law.[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 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]
![](../I/m/Mary_Anne_Franks_at_Internet_Education_Foundation_2014.jpg)
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]
Career
Franks is a Rhodes scholar who earned her MPhil and a DPhil in modern languages and literature from the University of Oxford. She also holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA in philosophy and English literature from Loyola University New Orleans.[13]
She was a Bigelow Fellow and lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School 2008–2010 and a lecturer in social studies at Harvard University 2005–2008. In 2013, she was a visiting professor at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.[1][13]
She is the vice-president and legislative & tech policy director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit organization that seeks to challenge cyber harassment.[14]
Selected works
- Articles
- Dean, Michelle (2012). "The Story of Amanda Todd". The New Yorker (quoted).
- Franks, Mary Anne (18 December 2013). "The Lawless Internet? Myths and Misconceptions About CDA Section 230". The Huffington Post.
- Franks, Mary Anne (23 February 2014). "We need new laws to put a stop to revenge porn". The Independent. London.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2014). "It's simple: criminalize revenge porn, or let men punish women they don't like". The Guardian.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2014). "The Many Ways Twitter Is Bad at Responding to Abuse". The Atlantic.
- Franks, Mary Anne (13 August 2014). "Presumed Unworthy". The Huffington Post.
- Franks, Mary Anne (1 April 2015). "The ACLU's Frat House Take on 'Revenge Porn'". The Huffington Post.
- Franks, Mary Anne (22 June 2015). "How to Defeat 'Revenge Porn': First, Recognize It's About Privacy, Not Revenge". The Huffington Post.
- Franks, Mary Anne (26 June 2015). "Who's Afraid of Hot Girls?". The Huffington Post.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2001-11-30). "The Need for Sexual Privacy Laws". Brookings Tech Tank. Brookings Institution. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Franks, Mary Anne (23 January 2014). "Free Speech Elitism: Harassment is not the Price "We" Pay for Free Speech". The Huffington Post Blog. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Franks, Mary Anne (3 September 2014). "Precautions and Privacy". nydailynews.com. New York Daily News. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Franks, Mary Anne (3 March 2014). "Stand Your Ground's Woman Problem". The Huffington Post Blog. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2014-10-09). "Jennifer Lawrence is Right: Why Nonconsensual Porn Should be a Sex Crime". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2015). "Protecting Sexual Privacy: New York Needs a 'Revenge Porn' Law" (PDF). Atticus. 27 (1). Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2014-09-03). "The Internet's Privacy Hypocrisy". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Academic Scholarship
- Franks, Mary Anne (2012). "Unwilling Avatars: Idealism and Discrimination in Cyberspace". Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. 20 (2): 224–261. SSRN 1374533.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2012). "Sexual Harassment 2.0". Maryland Law Review. 7 (3): 655–704.
- Citron, Danielle Keats; Franks, Mary Anne (2014). "Criminalizing Revenge Porn". Wake Forest Law Review. 49 (2): 345–392.
- Franks, Mary Anne (February 2014). "How to Feel Like a Woman, or Why Punishment Is a Drag" (PDF). UCLA Law Review. 61 (3): 566–605.
- Franks, Mary Anne (August 2014). "I Am/I Am Not: On Angela Harris's Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory". California Law Review. 102 (4): 1053–1068. SSRN 2477961.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2014-09-18). "Real Men Advance, Real Women Retreat: Stand Your Ground, Battered Women's Syndrome, and Violence as Male Privilege". University of Miami Law Review. 68 (4). SSRN 2498180.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2012-01-18). "When Bad Speech Does Good". Loyola University Chicago Law Journal. 43. SSRN 1987855.
- Franks, Mary Anne (December 2011). "Lies, Damned Lies, and Judicial Empathy". Washburn Law Journal. 51 (1). SSRN 2019755.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2007). "Guantanamo Forever: United States Sovereignty and the Unending State of Exception". Harvard Law and Policy Review. 1. SSRN 1369355.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2015-08-17). "Drafting an Effective 'Revenge Porn' Law: A Guide for Legislators". SSRN. SSRN. SSRN 2468823.
- Franks, Mary Anne (2016-03-14). "Men, Women, and Optimal Violence". SSRN. SSRN 2817389. Cite journal requires
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References
- "Mary Anne Franks". law.miami.edu. University of Miami School of Law.
- "Huffington Post". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- "Mary Anne Franks - Media". Moving Targets. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- "IMDb entry for Hot Girls Wanted". IMDb.com. IMDb. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Jones, Rashida. "Can a Feminist Like Porn?". Glamour.com. Glamour. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
- "Meet the Krav Maga-fighting law professor behind U.S. revenge porn laws". The Daily Dot. 2014-04-15.
- O'Hara, Mary Emily. "A federal revenge-porn bill is expected next month". Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Roy, Jessica (24 June 2015). "How Tech Companies are Fighting Revenge Porn - and Winning". New York Magazine. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Kelly, Heather (19 June 2015). "Google bans revenge porn". CNN. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Brown, Kristen V. "Why did it take so long so ban revenge porn?". Fusion. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Collier, Kevin (2014-12-21). "The heroes in the fight to save the Internet". Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
- Jeffers, Jason Fitzroy. "Local Law Professor Promotes Self Defense". Ocean Drive.
- "Profile with Mary Anne Franks". rhodesproject.com. Rhodes Project.
- "CCRI Board of Directors and Advisors". cybercivilrights.org. Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Archived from the original on 2015-07-02.