Mary Anne Franks to Give Reading on ‘Fearless Speech’ The George Washington University professor’s talk will be held April 3 on W&L’s campus.

By Emily Innes
March 27, 2025

Mary Anne Franks, the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology and Civil Rights Law at George Washington University, will give a reading at Washington and Lee University on April 3 at 5:30 p.m. in Hillel House. Franks will discuss her most recent book, “Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment” (2024), and a book signing will follow.

The reading is free and open to the public and is sponsored by W&L’s Center for International Education and the Law, Justice and Society program.

Franks is an internationally recognized expert on the intersection of civil rights, free speech and technology, and her research interests include family law, criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law and Second Amendment law. Franks is also the author of “The Cult of Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech” (2019), and her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review, among others.

Franks received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her doctorate from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She is a fellow at 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.