Courses Taught

• 120: Constitutional Law
• 130: Contracts
• 518: Constitutional Law II
• 521: The Culture of American Law
• 567: Wrestling with Texts: Communities, Practices, and Traditions
• 572: Language of Constitutional Law
• 594: Theological Dimensions of the Law
• 604: Ad Hoc Seminar
• 611A: Readings in Ethics
• 611B: Readings in Ethics (*cont. from fall)

Interests

"I am especially concerned in my legal scholarship with the role of the United States Constitution in the activities of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

As someone interested in theological issues, I am intrigued with poetry as a mode of expressing faith, and I hope to publish on that.

Perhaps my oldest and most abiding intellectual interest is in Byzantium."

Professor of Law

Jeff Powell has been a member of the Duke faculty since 1987. He teaches contracts and constitutional law and history in the Law School. In 1999 the Duke Bar Association presented Powell with the Excellence in Small Section Teaching Award, and in 2001/2, he was the University Scholar/Teacher of the year.

Professor Powell has served in both the federal and state governments, as a deputy assistant attorney general and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice, and as special counsel to the Attorney General of North Carolina; he has briefed and argued cases in both federal and state courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States.

Powell's recent scholarly work has focused on the constitutional law governing foreign policy, the role of history and politics in constitutional decision-making, and the moral choices involved in being a lawyer.

A graduate of St. David’s College of the University of Wales and of the Yale Law School Professor Powell also has a Ph.D. in Christian theological ethics and holds a joint appointment in the Divinity School.