Cedric Merlin Powell

Cedric Merlin Powell, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law and Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law

Professor Powell received his B.A. with Honors in Politics from Oberlin College and his J.D. from New York University School of Law where he served as Managing Editor of the N.Y.U Review of Law & Social Change. Professor Powell served as law clerk to the Honorable Julia Cooper Mack of the D.C. Court of Appeals; he was Karpatkin Fellow in the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union; and he practiced as a litigation associate with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York.

Professor Powell’s articles have appeared in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives; SMU Law Review; Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal; Harvard Journal on Racial & Ethnic Justice; Howard Law Journal; University of Miami Law Review; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; and the Utah Law Review, among others.

While a visiting professor at HUSL in 2022-23, Professor Powell was the inaugural Broady Endowed Chair and presented the inaugural Broady Lecture, Post-Racial Constitutionalism and the Roberts Court and hosted a national symposium on structural inequality.

Professor Powell is author of POST-RACIAL CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE ROBERTS COURT: RHETORICAL NEUTRALITY AND THE PERPETUATION OF INEQUALITY (Cambridge University Press 2023). He is co-editor of RACIAL JUSTICE IN AMERICAN LAND USE (Craig Anthony Arnold, Cedric Merlin Powell, Laura Rothstein, and Cate Fosl, Co-Editors) (Cambridge University Press 2025).

Professor Powell’s new book project is POST-RACIAL FEDERALISM: RACE, LIBERTY, AND THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF OPPRESSION (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2027).