Ralph Richard Banks

Last updated
Ralph Richard Banks
Born
Ralph Richard Banks

(1964-12-11) December 11, 1964 (age 59)
Nationality American
Occupation(s) Law professor
Author
Spouse Jennifer Eberhardt
Academic background
Education Stanford University
Harvard Law School

Ralph Richard Banks (born December 11, 1964) is a professor at Stanford Law School, where he has taught since 1998. He also teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. His scholarship focuses on race, inequality and the law. [1] He published the book Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone in 2011.

Contents

Early life and education

Ralph Richard Banks grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from University School in 1983. [2] He then enrolled at Stanford University, where he received both bachelor's and master's degrees in 1987. He received his J.D. degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1994.

After graduating from Stanford, Banks wrote regularly about race, culture, and inequality for a wide array of newspapers, including The New York Times , [3] the Los Angeles Times , [4] the Chicago Tribune , The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), the Detroit Free Press , The Detroit News , The Atlanta Journal-Constitution , the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , The Denver Post , and the San Francisco Chronicle , among others.

After graduating from law school, Banks practiced law at the San Francisco office of O'Melveny & Myers. He is a member of the California Bar.

Academic career

After leaving private practice, Banks served as the Reginald F. Lewis Fellow at Harvard Law School, where he wrote "The Color of Desire: Fulfilling Adoptive Parents' Racial Preferences Through Discriminatory State Action." The article subsequently appeared in the Yale Law Journal . [5]

Following his fellowship, Banks clerked for the Honorable Barrington D. Parker Jr., of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Banks' research addresses issues related to race and inequality across a variety of domains, from criminal justice, to employment, to the family. [6] He has written and lectured widely in these areas. Professor Banks teaches family law, employment discrimination law, race and law, and the Fourteenth Amendment. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia Law School. His scholarly writings have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, [7] the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, [8] and many others. He is an editorial board member of the Law & Society Review.

Courses taught

Personal life

Ralph Richard Banks lives with his wife, Jennifer Eberhardt, a prominent social psychologist, [9] Stanford University faculty member and Macarthur Grant awardee, [10] and their three children (Everett, Ebbie, and Harlan) in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanford Law School</span> Law school of Stanford University, California, U.S

Stanford Law School (SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% in 2021, the second-lowest of any law school in the country. George Triantis currently serves as Dean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catharine A. MacKinnon</span> American feminist scholar and legal activist

Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hart Ely</span> American legal scholar (1938–2003)

John Hart Ely was an American legal scholar. He was a professor of law at Yale Law School from 1968 to 1973, Harvard Law School from 1973 to 1982, Stanford Law School from 1982 to 1996, and at the University of Miami Law School from 1996 until his death. From 1982 until 1987, he was the 9th dean of Stanford Law School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Virginia School of Law</span> Public law school in Charlottesville, Virginia

The University of Virginia School of Law is the law school of the University of Virginia, a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-discrimination law</span> Legislation designed to prevent discrimination against particular groups of people

Anti-discrimination law or non-discrimination law refers to legislation designed to prevent discrimination against particular groups of people; these groups are often referred to as protected groups or protected classes. Anti-discrimination laws vary by jurisdiction with regard to the types of discrimination that are prohibited, and also the groups that are protected by that legislation. Commonly, these types of legislation are designed to prevent discrimination in employment, housing, education, and other areas of social life, such as public accommodations. Anti-discrimination law may include protections for groups based on sex, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, mental illness or ability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/expression, sex characteristics, religion, creed, or individual political opinions.

Critical race theory (CRT) is an interdisciplinary academic field focused on the relationships between social conceptions of race and ethnicity, social and political laws, and media. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, and not based only on individuals' prejudices. The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical theory rather than criticizing or blaming individuals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Law school rankings in the United States</span>

Law school rankings are a specific subset of college and university rankings dealing specifically with law schools. Like college and university rankings, law school rankings can be based on empirical data, subjectively-perceived qualitative data, or some combination of these. Such rankings are often consulted by prospective students as they choose which schools they will apply to or which school they will attend. There are several different law school rankings, each of which has a different emphasis and methodology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affirmative action in the United States</span>

In the United States, affirmative action consists of government-mandated, government-approved, and voluntary private programs granting special consideration to groups considered or classified as historically excluded, specifically racial minorities and women. These programs tend to focus on access to education and employment in order to redress the disadvantages associated with past and present discrimination. Another goal of affirmative action policies is to ensure that public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more representative of the populations they serve.

Kiwi Alejandro Danao Camara, also known as K.A.D. Camara, is a Filipino American attorney and businessman known for being founder and former CEO of CS Disco. He also represented defendant Jammie Thomas-Rasset in the first file-sharing copyright infringement lawsuit in the U.S. brought by major record labels to be tried by a jury. Camara abruptly resigned from CS Disco in September 2023 following accusations of improper sexual conduct.

Robert I. Weisberg is an American lawyer. He is the Edwin E. Huddleson Jr. Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and an expert on criminal law and criminal procedure, as well as a leading scholar in the law and literature movement.

Ian Ayres is an American lawyer and economist. Ayres is a professor at the Yale Law School and at the Yale School of Management.

Howard Fenghau Chang is an American legal academic and the Earle Hepburn Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

The Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review is a student-run law review published by Harvard Law School. The journal is published two times per year and contains articles, essays, and book reviews concerning civil rights and liberties. In 2009, its online companion Amicus was launched, which features standard length journal articles coupled with online responses. In 2018, the journal launched its podcast, Taking Liberties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zachary D. Kaufman</span> American legal academic (born 1979)

Zachary Daniel Coleman Kaufman is a law professor, political scientist, author, and social entrepreneur. He is currently associate professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Houston Law Center, where he teaches Criminal Law, International Law, and International and Transitional Justice. He also holds appointments at the university's Department of Political Science, Hobby School of Public Affairs, and Elizabeth D. Rockwell Center on Ethics and Leadership. Kaufman specializes in criminal law, international law, international and transitional justice, international courts and tribunals, human rights, atrocity crimes, atrocity prevention and response, legislation, bystanders and upstanders, U.S. foreign policy and national security, the United Nations, social entrepreneurship, and Africa.

Christopher Alan Bracey is an American law professor and former litigator who currently serves as the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs of The George Washington University. He is a leading scholar on race, inequality, and the law and is the author of Saviors or Sellouts: The Promise and Peril of Black Conservatism from Booker T. Washington to Condoleezza Rice (2008) and co-editor of The Dred Scott Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law (2010).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Taub</span> American academic

Jennifer Taub is an American law professor, advocate, and commentator focusing on corporate governance, financial market regulation, and white collar crime.

Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt is an American social psychologist who is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Eberhardt has been responsible for major contributions on investigating the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime through methods such as field studies and laboratory studies. She has also contributed to research on unconscious bias, including demonstrating how racial imagery and judgment affect culture and society within the domain of social justice. The results from her work have contributed to training law enforcement officers and state agencies to better their judgments through implicit bias training. She has also provided directions for future research in this domain and brought attention to mistreatment in communities due to biases.

Deborah N. Archer is an American civil rights lawyer and law professor. She is the Jacob K. Javits Professor at New York University and professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law. She also directs the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law and the Civil Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law. In January 2021, she was elected president of the American Civil Liberties Union, becoming the first African American to hold the position in the organization’s history.

References

  1. "Ralph Richard Banks | Stanford Law School". Archived from the original on 2010-03-25. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
  2. "Is Marriage for White People? by Ralph Richard Banks" . Retrieved 2020-07-17.
  3. "Complicated Dynamics | Stanford Law School". Archived from the original on 2010-08-16. Retrieved 2009-07-24.
  4. "News from California, the nation and world". Los Angeles Times.
  5. 107 Yale L. J. 875 (1998)
  6. "Clayman Institute for Gender Research: Faculty Advisory Board". Archived from the original on 2009-06-20. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
  7. Banks, R. Richard (December 16, 2003). "Beyond Profiling: Race, Policing, and the Drug War". SSRN   478481 via papers.ssrn.com.
  8. "Volume 89 Number 5". www.lawschool.cornell.edu.
  9. "Jennifer L. Eberhardt - Stanford University". web.stanford.edu.
  10. "Stanford's Jennifer Eberhardt wins MacArthur 'genius' grant". Los Angeles Times. September 17, 2014.