Robin M. Powell is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the rights of parents with disabilities. Dr. Powell will join the faculty at the University of Oklahoma School of Law in 2022, where she teaches family law, disability law, professional responsibility, and public health law. Dr. Powell’s research focuses on the intersection of disability law, family law, reproductive justice, and public health law, with a particular focus on examining how law and policy influence decisions about whether and when to have children with disabilities. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, University of Washington Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Washington Law Review, Harvard Law Review Blog, Virginia Law Review Online, Yale Law & Policy Review, Stanford Law & Policy Review, Yale Law & Feminism Journal, and others.
Prior to joining the OU Law School, Dr. Powell served as the Bruce R. Jacob Visiting Assistant Professor at Stetson University School of Law, where he taught tort law, disability law, and public health law, and he also taught disability law as a lecturer at Boston University School of Law for three years.
As a woman with a disability, Dr. Powell has dedicated her career to advancing disability rights. For nearly five years she served as attorney counsel to the National Council on Disability (NCD), an independent federal agency that advises the President and Congress on issues relating to disabilities. Previously, she served as a research associate at Brandeis University’s Lurie Institute for Disability Policy Studies, Disability Rights Program Manager at the Equal Rights Center, Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Disability Policy Consortium, and Staff Attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services.
Dr. Powell is lead author of the NCD report, “Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children.” As a leading expert, she has been interviewed extensively in international, national and local print, radio and television publications, including ABC News, BBC, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, New York Magazine, NPR, USA Today and The Washington Post. In May 2016, she was an invited speaker at the White House Forum on the Civil Rights of Parents with Disabilities.