News & Commentary written by Robyn M. Powell

Robyn M. Powell is one of the country’s foremost authorities on the rights of parents with disabilities. Dr. Powell joined the University of Oklahoma College of Law faculty in 2022, where she teaches Family Law, Disability Law, Professional Responsibility, and Public Health Law. Dr. Powell’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of disability law, family law, reproductive justice, and public health law, with a particular emphasis on examining how laws and policies affect disabled people’s decision-making about whether and when to have children. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Washington University 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 Journal of Law & Feminism, among others.

Before joining OU Law, Dr. Powell was the Bruce R. Jacob Visiting Assistant Professor at the Stetson University College of Law, where she taught Torts, Disability Law, and Public Health Law. For three years, she was an Instructor at Boston University School of Law, where she taught Disability Law.

As a disabled woman, Dr. Powell has dedicated her career to advancing the rights of people with disabilities. For nearly five years, she served as an Attorney-Advisor at the National Council on Disability (NCD), an independent federal agency that advises the President and Congress on matters concerning people with disabilities. Previously, she served as a Research Associate at the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy at Brandeis University, Disability Rights Program Manager at the Equal Rights Center, Assistant Director for Policy and Advocacy at the Disability Policy Consortium, and Staff Attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services.

Dr. Powell is the principal author of NCD’s report, Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children. As a leading expert, she has been interviewed extensively for international, national, and local print, radio, and television, including ABC News, BBC, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, New York Magazine, NPR, USA Today, and Washington Post. In May 2016, she was an invited speaker at the White House Forum on the Civil Rights of Parents with Disabilities.