Catherine Powell

Catherine Powell is a Visiting Professor for the 2012-13 academic year and teaches international law, constitutional law, and constitutional rights in comparative perspective. She has recently served in government on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff and on the White House National Security Staff, where she was Director for Human Rights. During her government service, she worked on international organizations, treaties, human rights, democracy, refugee protection, technology and social media, gender, and Arab Spring. Professor Powell is on leave from the Fordham Law School faculty, and her current scholarship focuses on global governance, gender and international law, and the relationship between international law and constitutional law. She was previously on the Human Rights Watch board of directors and was a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member. From 1998 to 2002, she was on the faculty at Columbia Law School, as Founding Director of the Human Rights Institute and the Human Rights Clinic. She clerked in the Southern District of New York for Leonard Sand. Her B.A. and J.D. are from Yale, and she has a Master’s Degree from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.