George Washington Univ. Law
School, 2000 H Street, N.W., Stockton Hall 402 Washington, DC 20052 (202) 994-7229 Fax: (202) 697-5000 SEND EMAIL: LINK B.S.E.E., M.I.T., OTHER LINKS: Major Professional Accomplishments Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Volleyball:
Club,
GWU IM, Cruises,
In
Wikipedia
(contains errors) Some
Press Releases (PR-Inside) In
Publications (Lexis) in 2006
Among "Noted Faculty" at GWU Law Role in Supreme Court
SCRAP Case SOME STREAMING VIDEO: Why Forcing Students Into Same Sex
Dorms is Illegal Sex Discrimination, America
Live (Fox News) [06/23/11] and America's
News HQ (Fox News) [07/17/11]
Cavuto "Loses
It" Debating Banzhaf
Over McDonald's Fox
News [05/19/11] |
John F. Banzhaf III
[pronounced Banz-Half] is a nationally-known professor and
practitioner of public interest law, and a former
scientist, engineer, mathematician, and inventor.
[See links below and in left column]
Prof. John Banzhaf has been called the "Ralph
Nader of the Tobacco Industry," "One
of America's Premier Legal Activists," "An
Unsung American Hero." "The Man Behind the Ban on
Cigarette Commercials," "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," " Legal
Academia's Instigator in Chief," One
of the World's Top "Game Theorists," 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." As a young lawyer, John Banzhaf brought a legal
action which required broadcast stations to provide
hundreds of millions of dollars worth 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 buses, 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, in helping to pass, implement,
and enforce the first world antismoking and nonsmokers'
rights treaty [nosmoking.ws],
and persuading
Congress to authorize charging smokers more for their
health insurance as part of its comprehensive reform of
health care. More recently he helped to 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. He has been dubbed "The Father of
Potty Parity" for spearheading legislative and other
movements to equalize the waiting time to use restrooms,
and most recently won a major victory in the U.S. House
of Representatives. 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, Fox & Friends, Technopolitics, CNN News, Larry King, Hannity & Colmes, Phil Donohue, the Abrams Report, American Morning With Paula Zahn, Morning Joe, 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, link2,
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)
SOME VIDEOS YOU MIGHT
WANT TO CHECK OUT HUMOROUS -
Smokers' Rights, Civil Lights - Why is Smoking Like
Masturbation, The
Daily Show [06/06/02] HUMOROUS -
Why There's No Such Thing As a Right to Smoke, Morton
Downey 1988 John Stossel - Regulation Strangulation link Tweets by ProfBanzhaf
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