About the Expert
Expert Bio
Catherine Powell is an adjunct senior fellow in the Women and Foreign Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Fordham Law School, where she teaches international law, human rights, constitutional law, and comparative constitutional law. Her prior experience includes stints in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's policy planning office and in the White House National Security Council as director for human rights in the Obama administration. Earlier, Powell was founding director of both the Human Rights Institute and the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, where she was on the faculty as a clinical professor. In addition to formerly serving on the Human Rights Watch board, she has been a consultant on national security and human rights matters for the Center for American Progress and the American Constitution Society as well as a visiting professor at Georgetown University School of Law (2012-2013) and Columbia Law School (spring 2007 and fall 2016).
She is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where she was a senior editor on the Yale Law Journal, and obtained a master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. After her graduate work, she was a post-graduate Ford Fellow in Teaching International Law at Harvard Law School and then clerked for Judge Leonard B. Sand on the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. Powell is also on the American Journal of International Law board of editors.
Her recent publications include a blog, “The United Divided States: San Francisco Sues Donald Trump for Sanctuary Cities Order” in Just Security (2017); an opinion piece, “How Women Could Save the World,” in the That's Debatable section of the Nation (2017); and a law review article, “How Women Could Save the World, If Only We Would Let Them: From Gender Essentialism to Inclusive Security,” 28 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 271 (2017). Other recent writings include “Reflections on Zivotofsky v. Kerry: Presidential Signing Statements and Dialogic Constitutionalism,” American Journal of International Law Unbound (2015); “Gender Indicators as Global Governance: Not Your Father's World Bank,” chapter in Big Data, Big Challenges in Evidenced-Based Policy Making (Kumar Jayasuriya ed., 2015) (West Academic Press, Publisher), reprinted in 17 Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law 777 (2016) (with updated 2016 data); “Libya: A Multilateral Constitutional Moment?” American Journal of International Law (2012); and “A Missed Opportunity to Lead by Example,” New York Times, Room for Debate on Have Treaties Gone Out of Style? (2012). She is currently writing on gender, national security, and immigration.
Affiliations:
Fordham Law School, professor of law
American Journal or International Law, board of editors
Featured
Current Projects
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During a recent CFR roundtable, Professor Safiya Noble spoke about digital human rights – an issue on which she is advising the United Nations. Dr. Noble explores the biases against women and people of color that are embedded in search engine results and algorithms.
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Senior Fellow Catherine Powell hosted a roundtable discussion with Muneer Ahmad, a leading voice and scholar on immigrant rights, on strategies for litigating the Trump administration’s family separation policy.
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Eighteen states and the District of Columbia filed an amicus brief in support of a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s new policy that denies asylum to applicants fleeing domestic or gang violence.The policy hits women and children—the most common survivors of domestic abuse—particularly hard.
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This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to Nadia Murad, a survivor—and activist for other survivors—of sex trafficking by the Islamic State group, and Denis Mukwege, a gynecological surgeon from the Congo in recognition of their work “to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.” It is heartening that Mukwege and Murad are receiving the recognition that their work deserves. Let us hope that this publicity will turn into action.
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The Trump administration announced intentions to lower the refugee ceiling in fiscal year 2019, a change that would disproportionately affect women and children, who represented 72 percent of refugees in 2016.
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Just as the mobile phone and solar energy have allowed developing nations to leap-frog into more advanced stages of technology, advances in medical technology can provide easy access to maternal and women’s healthcare in rural areas around the world.
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Kofi Annan—the seventh secretary-general of the UN—passed away last week. He should be remembered not only for his work to fight poverty and promote economic development, but also his efforts to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325.
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Mary Harvey, a former member of the U.S. national women's soccer team, and Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch discuss how sports institutions can be an important tool for expanding human rights abroad.
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While women are still underrepresented in media generally, social media encourages a more level playing field, allowing for the voices of women from a wider array of backgrounds and countries, with or without traditional power, to be heard.
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As blockchain and cryptocurrencies pioneer new frontiers in finance and beyond, we should be worried about the industry's gender disparity.
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Since becoming the World Bank Group General Counsel, Sandie Okoro has supported the World Bank’s initiative to address gender-based violence as part and parcel of economic development.
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Recent allegations of sexual abuse in Syria illuminate the difficulty of holding aid workers accountable for sexual crimes in war zones. As the humanitarian aid sector faces its own #metoo moment, the United Nations should set a standard in the sector.
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The #MeToo campaign has spread across the globe, with women in eighty-five countries and counting using the hashtag to call attention to pervasive sexual harassment and workplace discrimination.
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Women in Tunisia have far more rights than their regional counterparts, but they still are far from true equality. Unequal inheritance laws provide a window into what's really going on in Tunisia.
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