Mary Anne Franks

Dr. Mary Anne Franks is the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at the George Washington University Law School. She is an internationally recognized expert on the intersection of civil rights, free speech, and technology. Her areas of expertise also include family law, criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law, and Second Amendment law. Dr. Franks is the author of two books: Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment (Bold Type Books, 2024) and The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019). Her scholarship has also appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review, among others. She a Fellow with the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project, and a member of the American Law Institute. She is admitted to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court and the District of Columbia.

Dr. Franks is also the President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating online abuse and discrimination. In 2013, she drafted the first model criminal statute on the nonconsensual distribution of intimate imagery (NCII, sometimes referred to as “revenge porn”), which has served as the template for multiple state laws and for pending federal legislation. She served as the reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s 2018 Uniform Civil Remedies for the Unauthorized Disclosure of Intimate Images Act and frequently advises state and federal legislators on various forms of technology-facilitated abuse. Dr. Franks also advises major technology platforms on privacy, free expression, and safety issues. 

Prior to joining the GW faculty, Dr. Franks was the Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair at the University of Miami School of Law and an Affiliated Faculty member of the University of Miami Department of Philosophy. She 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. She holds a JD from Harvard Law School as well as a doctorate from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. 

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