Ekow Yankah

Ekow Nyansah Yankah is an American jurist who is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. His research considers criminal law, election law and police brutality.

Early life and education

Yankah, born to Ghanaian parents, earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan. He obtained his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School in 2000. Yankah was awarded a Marshall Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, earning a Bachelor of Civil Law at Lincoln College. He held visiting positions at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. His first faculty position was at the University of Illinois College of Law.

Research and career

His research considers the intersection of law and society. In particular, Yankah focusses on election reform, criminal justice and policing. He believes that the American legal system fails Black communities, with a particular focus on opioid addiction, mass incarceration and police brutality.

Yankah has investigated voting rights and election law. He is co-chair of the New York Democratic Lawyers Council (NYDLC), a coalition of attorneys who look to protect a citizen's right to vote. The NYDLC are involved with election monitoring, pro-voting advocacy and educational empowerment. In 2021, state leaders in New York appointed Yankah chair of the state’s newly established Public Campaign Finance Board.

He is committed to criminal justice reform, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Innocence Project. In 2017 Yankah was awarded the Innocence Project Advocate of Justice award. In particular, he believes that the vague language of the Constitution of the United States leaves too much scope for dangerous interpretation; systematically supporting police brutality. Yankah has studied the legal landscape of accountability for police officers. During the Ferguson unrest Yankah attended a rally at Columbia University. He said, "If I hear one more commentator on public TV say, 'Let's start a conversation about race,' I will lose my mind ... We've been having a conversation for 80 years,". In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, Yankah said, “We can no longer have an America where white problems are social problems and black problems are policing problems,”.

In 2019 Yankah taught a course on Black Lives Matter, race and policing at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Controversial works

In 2017, Yankah penned an opinion editorial for the New York Times questioning whether he could allow his children to befriend white people in the era of Donald Trump's presidency. The article was criticized by many political commentators.

Selected publications

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References

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Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
University of Michigan alumni
Yeshiva University faculty
Cardozo School of Law faculty
21st-century African-American lawyers
Alumni of the University of Oxford