Ekow Yankah facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ekow N. Yankah
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| Alma mater | University of Michigan Columbia University University of Oxford |
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| Institutions | Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law |
Ekow Nyansah Yankah is an American lawyer and professor. He teaches law at the University of Michigan. He studies important topics like criminal law, voting rules, and how police interact with communities.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Ekow Yankah was born to parents from Ghana. He went to the University of Michigan for his first degree. He then studied law at Columbia University and became a lawyer in 2000.
He won a special scholarship, the Marshall Scholarship. This allowed him to study more law at the University of Oxford in England. Before joining the University of Michigan, he taught at other universities.
What Ekow Yankah Studies
Ekow Yankah's work looks at how laws affect society. He focuses on making elections fair, improving the justice system, and how police do their jobs. He believes the American legal system often fails Black communities. He has studied issues like mass incarceration and police brutality.
Voting Rights and Elections
Yankah has studied voting rights and election laws. He helps lead the New York Democratic Lawyers Council (NYDLC). This group of lawyers works to protect people's right to vote. They watch elections, support fair voting, and teach people about their rights. In 2021, leaders in New York chose him to lead the state's new Public Campaign Finance Board.
Improving the Justice System
He is very dedicated to improving the justice system. He is on the board of directors for the Innocence Project. This group works to free people who were wrongly convicted of crimes. In 2017, the Innocence Project gave him an award for his advocacy.
Yankah believes that some parts of the Constitution of the United States are not clear enough. He thinks this can lead to problems, sometimes supporting police brutality. He has looked closely at how police officers are held responsible for their actions.
During protests in Ferguson, Missouri, he spoke at a rally. He said that people had been talking about race for a very long time. After the death of George Floyd, Yankah stated that problems affecting white people are seen as social issues. He noted that problems affecting Black people are often seen only as policing issues.
In 2019, he taught a class at Georgetown University Law Center. The class was about the Black Lives Matter movement, race, and policing.
Selected Publications
- "The Law of the Police"
- "The Problem of Police Accountability"
- "Voting Rights and the Future of Democracy"
