Robyn Powell

Robyn M. Powell is an Associate Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law, where she teaches Torts, Professional Responsibility, Disability Law, Public Health Law, and Reproductive Rights and Justice. Before rejoining Stetson, Dr. Powell was an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. She previously served as a Bruce R. Jacob Visiting Assistant Professor at Stetson and as a Lecturer at Boston University School of Law.

A disabled woman and interdisciplinary legal scholar, Dr. Powell studies how law, policy, and public institutions shape the autonomy, equality, health, reproductive freedom, and family lives of people with disabilities, working across disability law and policy, reproductive justice, family law, and health law. A key focus of her scholarship is developing disability reproductive justice as a framework to explore how disability, reproduction, family, and state power intersect.

Dr. Powell has published in many of the nation’s leading law reviews, including the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, California Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Washington University Law Review, UC Davis Law Review, Washington Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, and Wake Forest Law Review, among others. She also has an extensive body of interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed scholarship spanning public health, health care, disability studies, social work, and child welfare.

Dr. Powell is nationally recognized for her work on the rights of parents with disabilities and their children. She was the principal author of the National Council on Disability’s landmark report Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children. In 2016, she was an invited speaker at the White House Forum on the Civil Rights of Parents with Disabilities.

Dr. Powell has held leadership positions across the legal, public health, and disability communities. She is Chair-Elect of the American Public Health Association’s Disability Section and previously served as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law Professors with Disabilities and Allies. She has also served on the executive committees of several AALS sections, as a Commissioner on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, on the boards of Disability Rights Florida and the Disability Policy Consortium, and on the steering committee for the National Federation of the Blind’s Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium.

Dr. Powell’s scholarship and expertise have been featured in national and international media, including The New York Times, NPR, BBC, ABC News, and the Associated Press. Her work has been honored with the Yale Law Journal’s Emerging Scholar of the Year award, the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law Professors with Disabilities and Allies’ Chai Feldblum Award, the American Public Health Association Law Section’s Early Career Award, and the American Public Health Association Disability Section’s New Investigator Award.

Before entering academia, Dr. Powell served for nearly five years as an Attorney-Advisor at the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that advises the President and Congress on disability policy. She also held legal and policy positions at the Equal Rights Center, Disability Policy Consortium, and Greater Boston Legal Services.

Dr. Powell earned her J.D. from Suffolk University Law School and her Ph.D. in Social Policy from Brandeis University.