About

Angela M. Banks serves as the Vice Dean and Charles J. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. She is an expert in immigration and citizenship law, with research focusing on membership and belonging in democratic societies. Her scholarship has been published in leading American law review journals, and she has contributed to discussions on immigration law, citizenship rights, and related topics. Prior to her current position, Professor Banks was a Professor of Law at William & Mary School of Law. Her professional background includes serving as the Reginald F. Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching at Harvard Law School, a legal advisor at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, and a law clerk for Judge Carlos F. Lucero of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She holds a B.A. in sociology from Spelman College, graduating summa cum laude, and a Master of Letters in sociology from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. She earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2000, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and the Harvard International Law Journal.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Geography
• Archaeology
• Law and economics
• History

Selected publications

• A Human Rights Approach to Membership and Belonging

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Constructing Effective Civic Education for Noncitizen Students

  Daedalus · 2024-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Primary and secondary education is essential because it not only provides students with critical literacy and numeracy skills, but also, for many students, it begins their civic education. The goals of civic education vary by country, but a consistent goal is to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to be productive members of society. Globally, approximately thirty-six million children are living outside of their country of nationality. With the growing number of migrant children, states are facing two challenges to effective civic education. The first is access to schools, and the second is creating a civic education curriculum that effectively prepares all students to participate in society in ways that align with democratic principles and goals. This essay focuses on unauthorized migrant children's access to public schools and argues for civic education to incorporate the exploration of membership boundaries so that students, citizen and noncitizen alike, can study unauthorized migrants' participation in society within the context of membership status. This exploration offers students the opportunity to consider how to better align unauthorized migrants' lived realities with their legal status-and to better realize democracy's promise.

  PublisherDOI

• A human rights approach to membership and belonging

  Routledge eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  This chapter explores the challenges that Nordic States have faced in realizing human rights education through the lens of membership. One reason implementing human rights education is challenging is because it is premised on a broader conception of membership than most States utilize. Citizenship is the membership model utilized in most States, and it premises membership on specific types of connections to the State. The human rights approach to membership is based on personhood and extends rights regardless of citizenship status. While Nordic nations have been pivotal in the establishment of human rights treaties and fervent advocates of human rights on the global stage, ensuring the rights of all within their borders remains challenging. This paradox underlines the chapter’s emphasis on legal literacy as a vital tool to address this dynamic. Legal literacy refers to knowledge about the substantive rights protected within the human rights regime, the acceptable approaches for protecting human rights, and the processes available to vindicate rights violations. Increasing teachers’ and students’ legal literacy provides the knowledge necessary to effectively teach about human rights, through human rights, and for human rights.

  PublisherDOI

• Citizenship in Africa: The Law of Belonging

  The American Journal of Comparative Law · 2020-04-08 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The United Nations estimates that there are 272 million migrants around the world.1 These individuals will become long-term residents, have families, and create communities. Yet the citizenship laws in their countries of residence may deny them and their children access to citizenship or take away previously granted citizenship. In light of such developments, the right to nationality has become an important right to examine. There is a growing literature within international human rights law about the right to nationality, but it is a topic that has received sparse attention from citizenship and nationality scholars. Bronwen Manby’s Citizenship in Africa: The Law of Belonging makes an important contribution at the intersection of these two literatures. Through a series of historical case studies, Manby offers important insights that support a robust right to nationality. By analyzing the history of nationality laws in a number of African states, Manby illustrates how the traditional approach of treating nationality determinations as decisions within the exclusive domain of the state leaves individuals extremely vulnerable to political, economic, and social losses. Furthermore, it is often the most marginalized individuals in society who will suffer the most.

  PublisherDOI

• Education in Times of Mass Migration

  Routledge eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Geography

  Multicultural education is an educational reform movement designed to make the total school environment more equitable for all students. Historically this movement focused on areas that received insufficient attention in the curriculum. These areas included race, class, gender, religion, language, exceptionality, and sexual orientation. Another area that has received minimal attention is immigration status. Immigration has often been treated as the source of racial, religious, and linguistic differences. However, immigration status itself is a significant form of difference that shapes individuals’ right to remain in the United States, access to employment and education, and opportunities for political participation. This chapter describes the unauthorized migrant population in the United States, explains the difference that immigration status makes in the lives of school-aged children and their families, and identifies specific issues that educators will face when acknowledging the varied immigration statuses within their classrooms and schools.

  PublisherDOI

• The Continuing Legacy of the National Origin Quotas

  William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science

  IRISH BECAME WHITE 49 (2009). While the immigrants who were targeted as undesirable in the national origin quotas would be understood as white within today's understandings of race and ethnicity, that was not the case in the early twentieth century.COHEN, supra note 2, at 85-86.For example, influential theories about race and America's "native stock" stated that "Irish, Italians, Poles, Russians, and Jews all made up distinct and distinctly inferior races that were infecting the superior gene pool that predated their arrival."Id.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Precarious Citizenship: Asian Immigrant Naturalization 1918 to 1925

  Minnesota journal of law & inequality · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  During the height of the exclusion era, when Asian immigrants were prohibited from naturalizing and becoming United States citizens, state and federal court judges around the country naturalized at least 500 Asian immigrant servicepersons and veterans. Between 1918 and 1925, Federal Bureau of Naturalization officials and state and federal court judges had to determine whether the military naturalization provisions enacted in 1918 included the same racial restrictions that the general naturalization provisions included. This Article tells the story of how these officials and judges navigated statutory text, congressional intent, and the reality of Asian immigrant membership in the United States Armed Forces to determine the role that race vis-à-vis military service should play in determining citizenship eligibility. The story of Asian immigrant naturalization between 1918 and 1925 highlights a long-standing question within American citizenship and immigration law: how to measure an applicant’s adoption of and commitment to mainstream American values, norms, and practices. Are there accurate and reliable categories that measure cultural assimilation and allow for cost-effective and efficient decision-making? Alternatively, are categories sufficiently inaccurate and unreliable such that individualized assessments of specific cultural criteria offer the only legitimate approach? Based on administrative memos, state and federal court judicial opinions, and newspaper articles, this article reveals how state and federal court judges struggled with this general question and how the Supreme Court resolved the split that existed across the country. United States naturalization law continues to require category-based decision-making, and it is important that we similarly interrogate those categories to determine the extent to which they accurately and reliably measure the intended naturalization criteria.

  PublisherDOI

• Designing and Evaluating Prevention and Risk Reduction Programs for High-Risk and Marginalized Target Populations

  2018-06-14

  book-chapterSenior author

  This chapter focuses on what we know about the experiences of and challenges faced by students of color, LGBTQ students, and students with disabilities. It also present a review of current prevention and intervention strategies that target these populations, as well as a discussion of strategies to enhance access to evidence-based prevention and intervention programs by members of the target populations. Students of color might also encounter difficulties related to "impostor feelings" or feeling like an intellectual fraud. Impostor feelings can arise from students being aware of negative stereotypes toward their racial and/or ethnic group with regard to intellectual ability. Within the LGBTQ population, certain sub-groups are at greater risk for negative outcomes than others, partially explained by the fact that homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia are three distinct constructs with overlapping but distinct mental health outcomes. The chapter recommends that continued efforts be made by researchers to investigate issues pertaining to students in these specific target groups.

  PublisherDOI

• Bringing Culture Back: Immigrants

  Santa Clara law review · 2017-10-24

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Citizenship, Culture, and Race in the United States

  2017-06-23 · 4 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Christine L. Nemacheck

  William & Mary

  2 shared

• Elizabeth Wenska

  2 shared

• Jeremy D. Stoddard

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  2 shared

• Courtland C. Lee

  1 shared

• Janina Dill

  1 shared

• A. E. Margarita Malayapillay

  1 shared

• Jennifer M. Wyatt

  Sharp Memorial Hospital

  1 shared

• Hari M. Osofsky

  Pennsylvania State University

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence, College of William & M…
• British Marshall Scholarship (1995)