S4-Bonus Episode: Black Women Law Profs

Michelle Jacobs is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Florida College of Law, and was the Racial Justice Term Professor for the 2020-2021 academic year. She taught Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, White Collar Crime, International Criminal Law and Critical Race Theory. Her scholarship focuses on access to justice for communities marginalized in and by the law. In particular, she concentrates on Black women’s experience with violence perpetrated by the state. Her work highlights the plight of Black women criminalized by the state for daring to protect their own lives against intimate partner violence, as well as the invisibility of Black women’s struggle against all forms of police violence. She is a frequent media commentator on racial bias in the criminal justice system, and on police violence, particularly as it relates to police murders and sexual assaults of Black women and girls. In addition, she gives frequent interviews to the press in on Critical Race Theory.

Taunya Lovell Banks is the Professor Emerita and former Jacob A. France Professor of Equality Jurisprudence at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. As a leading expert in antidiscrimination law and critical race theory, she writes about race and identity, the impact of skin tone discrimination (colorism), and the intersection of race, gender and class in law.

Ruth Gordon is a professor of law at Villanova Law School. Her scholarship focuses on International Law generally, and in particular the Third World encounter with international law. Her forthcoming book, Development Disrupted: The Global South in the 21st Century, will be out in July.

Linda Sheryl Greene is Dean and MSU Foundation Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law and an elected life member of The American Law Institute. Prior to her career in academia, she was a civil rights and constitutional law attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and a Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney who specialized in civil rights and constitutional law and a Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. She was the Chair of the 1990 Wisconsin Conference on Critical Race Theory, President of the Society of American Law Teachers, the founder of the People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference movement, and Vice Chair of the Counsel on Legal Educational Opportunity. Her recent scholarship reflects the breadth of her experience focusing on Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, Legislation, Civil Rights, and Sports Law.

Cheryl L. Wade is the Harold F. McNiece Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law. She teaches Issues of Race, Gender and Law, Business Organizations, Corporate Governance and Accountability, and Race and Business.  Her book, "Predatory Lending and The Destruction of the African American Dream” (coauthored with Dr. Janis Sarra) was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2020. Professor Wade is a member of the American Law Institute, a national organization of prominent judges, lawyers and academics who work to clarify, modernize and reform the law.