John F. Banzhaf III,
Professor of Public Interest Law, FAMRI
Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Prof.
George Washington Univ. Law School,
2000 H Street, N.W., Stockton Hall 402
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 659-4312 OR 994-7229
SEND EMAIL: LINK
B.S.E.E., M.I.T.,
J.D., Columbia University,
Sc.D., Thomas Jefferson University
OTHER LINKS:
Major Professional Accomplishments
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
Banzhaf
Index of Voting Power
Using Law to
Fight Obesity
Center For Nonsmokers' Rights
Volleyball: Club, GWU IM, Cruises,
Banzhaf in
Wikipedia (contains errors)
Banzhaf
in Recent
News (Google)
Banzhaf in Recent
News (Topix)
Banzhaf
Press Releases (PR-Inside)
Banzhaf in Archived News (Google)
Banzhaf
in Scholarly Papers (Google)
Banzhaf in Law Reviews
(Lexis)
Banzhaf in Publications
(Lexis) in 2006
Banzhaf
in American Legal Academics
Banzhaf
in Legal Documents (Google)
Banzhaf
in Govt. Documents (Google)
Banzhaf
"Noted Faculty" at GWU Law
SOME STREAMING VIDEO:
Smokers' Rights, Civil Lights?,
The Daily
Show, [06/06/02]
Defending
Right of Companies Not to Hire Smokers, Fox
& Friends (on Fox News) [01/22/10]
Legislating
Lifestyles or Injecting Personal Responsibility into Health Care?, The
Dr. Nancy [Snyderman] Show on MSNBC [09/16/09]
Charging
Obese Workers More for Health Insurance, TODAY
SHOW [10/11/09]
The
"Food Police," "Stossel" on Fox Business News Segment 2 Segment 3
[01/28/10]
New
Nicotine Vaccine for Smokers, WUSA-TV,
Channel 9 in DC [11/24/09]
On-Air Water-Throwing Incident Seen Round the World Morton Downey Show
Why
There's No Such Thing As a Right to Smoke, Morton Downey
1988
The
Cheeseburger Bill, MSNBC
[9/4/08]
Potential
Potty Problems at Inauguration, "Morning Joe" on
MSNBC-TV[1/19/08]
Fat
Law Suits, Scarborough
Country on MSNBC-TV [9/7/08]
Government
Regulation of Smoking (on Airplanes), American Debate
[1984]
Banzhaf
in a New Movie - "Waiting For My Real Life" link
Tobacco
Debate, Charlie
Rose Show [7/13/94]
Debate on Cigarette Advertising Directed to Children,
20/20, 1983 ABC-TV
Evening News
Battle of the Widening Bulge, Eye on American, CBS-TV
Evening News, [08/08/02]
Lawyer Preps for Fast Food Fight, CBS-TV Evening News [11/03/03]
Smoking David Susskind Show
[1986]
Law Suit Against McDonald's, Canadian
TV [03/23/02] link
Protecting Children From
Secondhand Tobacco Smoke [11/29/06] TODAY Show, NBC-TV
Why Do We Crave Unhealthy
Foods?: Addiction [11/30/06] CBS-TV Evening News
Who's to blame for
overweight epidemic? [5/21/07] Channel 14
Check back soon for more links
John F. Banzhaf III [pronounced Banz-half] is a nationally-known professor and practitioner of public interest law, and a former scientist, engineer and inventor. [See links below and in left column]
Prof. John Banzhaf has been called the "Ralph Nader
of the Tobacco Industry," "the Ralph Nader of Junk Food," "The Man Who Is Taking Fat
to
Court" [for using
legal action to fight OBESITY], "Mr. Anti-Smoking," "One of
the Most
Vocal and Effective Anti-Tobacco Attorneys," a "Radical
Feminist,"
a "Man Who Lives by his Writs," the "Father of Potty Parity,"
"the Area's Best-Known 'Radical' Law Professor," and an "Entrepreneur of
Litigation, [and] a Trial Lawyer's Trial Lawyer."
He has also been
hailed as "one of
the "100 Most Powerful People in Washington," "The Man Big
Tobacco and Now Fast Food Love to Hate," the lawyer "Who's Leading the
Battle Against Big Fat," "a
Driving Force Behind the Lawsuits That Have Cost Tobacco Companies
Billions of Dollars," "the Renowned and Often Flamboyant
Public-Interest Law Professor at George Washington University," "the
Fastest Legal Gun in the East," the "Dean
of Public Interest Lawyers," "a Major Crusader Against Big
Tobacco and Now Among Those Targeting the Food Industry," and "the law professor who
masterminded litigation against the tobacco industry."
He's also
been called — often by his enemies —
a "Legal Terrorist," the "Osama
bin Laden of Torts," a "Legal Bomb-Thrower," and a
"Legal Flamethrower,"
and
he has frequently been attacked on web sites (which are often
inaccurate) [see, e.g., BanzhafWatch.com]
by those who opposed his activities —
clear indications, he says, that his many targets fear him and his
legal
actions.
As a young lawyer, John Banzhaf brought a legal action which required broadcast stations to provide hundreds of millions of dollars of free broadcast time for anti-smoking messages — an action which resulted in the first ever decline in cigarette consumption, something even the 1964 Surgeon General's Report was not able to achieve. Subsequently, after founding Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) to serve as the legal-action arm of the antismoking community [ About ASH ], he helped drive cigarette commercials off the air, and started the nonsmokers' rights movement by first getting no-smoking sections — and then smoking bans — on airplanes and in many other public places.
Banzhaf and ASH have played a major role in the war
on smoking and for nonsmokers' rights, including promoting and helping
to mastermind law suits against the tobacco industry, in defending
the legal rights of nonsmokers in hundreds of legislative,
administrative, and judicial
proceedings, and in helping to pass, implement, and enforce the first
world antismoking and nonsmokers' rights treaty [nosmoking.ws]. More recently he
helped ban
cigarette advertising in several European countries, and to ban smoking
outdoors, in homes and cars where foster children are present, to
protect children involved in custody disputes, etc. [New Frontiers For
Nonsmokers]. His contributions
to the war on smoking have
been
very widely recognized [ What
Others Have Said About ASH]
At the George Washington University Law School,
Prof. John Banzhaf teaches Torts,
Administrative Law,
Disabled People and the Law, and Law and the Deaf. He also
teaches a unique world-famous course — "Legal Activism" [Law
637],
which has been dubbed "suing for credit"[GW's Legal
Powerhouse] and "Sue
the Bastards" — where his law students, which the press dubbed
"Banzhaf's Bandits" [Time
Magazine], learn to become public interest lawyers by
bringing
their own legal actions [Spotlight:
Professor brings the classroom to the courtroom].
He and his students are widely known for bringing hundreds of innovative public interest legal actions including one of the leading Supreme Court environmental law suits, persuading the F.T.C. to require "corrective advertising," preventing dry cleaners from charging women more to launder their shirts ," suing former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew to recover the bribes he received, safety standards for school buses, clearer warnings on birth control pills, smoke detectors in airplane lavatories, auto bumper standards, new police procedures for dealing with spousal abuse, the end to a scheme to defraud veterans, greater roles for blacks on television, clearer labeling of foods, and many other victories.
Prof. Banzhaf has also achieved many additional
public interest legal victories, including: forcing the
Cosmos Club to admit women, using the threat of a civil law suit to
pressure Durham County DA Mike Nifong to step down and drop rape
charges against three Duke lacrosse players, helping to get the first
woman admitted to formerly all-male state-supported military academies,
etc.
John Banzhaf has discussed and/or debated smoking and obesity — as well a wide variety of legal issues, including self defense, governmental corruption, sex discrimination, auto and food safety, jury nullification, Potty Parity, drug testing, various constitutional issues, etc. — on all of the major television network news programs, as well as on Face the Nation, McNeil Lehrer, Nightline, Oprah Winfrey, Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, The O'Reilly Factor, Nightwatch, Crossfire, Technopolitics, CNN News, Larry King, Hannity & Colmes, Phil Donohue, the Abrams Report, American Morning With Paula Zahn, DaySide with Linda Vester, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Tucker, and many other national programs both here and in other countries, in Op-Ed pieces, and in numerous programs and publications both here and around the world. More recently he appeared on The Daily Show, and the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
After graduating from Stuyvesant
High School in New York City, Professor Banzhaf received his
undergraduate degree
in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. For a time before entering
law school he worked as a
scientist and engineer, writing several published technical papers, and
obtaining two
U.S. patents; one on a Directional
Antenna for Space Satellites, and another (for which he wrote the
patent application) on an Electronic
Multiplying System. At the Columbia University Law School, he
was an
Editor of the Law Review, obtained the first copyright ever registered
on a computer program [link],
helped persuade Congress to amend the copyright
statute to include data processing, and developed a new mathematical
technique — now termed the "Banzhaf Power
Index" — used by Banzhaf and others for determining
voting
power in complex
voting systems including weighted
voting, multi-member electoral districts, the Electoral College, the EU Constitution1, EU
Constitution2, and in other situations (e.g., convex geometries, on
SSRN)
Professor Banzhaf serves as the Faculty Advisor for
the GWU Volleyball Club/Teams [ Club, GWU IM, Cruises,] and is a member
of the World Technology Network [http://www.wtn.net].
On campus, he played a role in forcing George Washington
University to discontinue
its Pinkerton-operated anonymous hotline [link], to revise its
sexual harassment policy, and to
limit smoking on campus. Link1, Link2 .