Madison Powers, J.D, D.Phil., is Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Vanderbilt University, a law degree from the University of Tennessee, and a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University (University College).

Primary research interests include: (1) political philosophy and practical ethics with a focus on the moral relation between the state and the individual; (2) the intersection of bioethics and political morality, especially questions regarding social justice, the social role of markets, individual liberty, and the protection of privacy.


Dr. Powers has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on a variety of topics in normative and practical philosophy. He is co-editor, with Ruth Faden and Gail Geller, of Aids, Women and the Next Generation, and with co-investigator Ruth Faden, he was the recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Investigator Award.

He also served for many years thereafter as a member and as chair of the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation overseeing the Investigator Awards Program, and he has participated in many private and governmental advisory bodies including the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) for the National Institutes of Health.

Drs. Powers and Faden are co-authors of a recent book, Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Care Policy (NY: Oxford University Press, 2006; revised paperback edition, 2008).

His current book-length project (tentatively titled Freedom and the Ends of Government) is a historical and analytical examination of how divergent conceptions of law’s primary social function co-evolved within political philosophy and legal theory. The book explores the surprising continuity of a moral ideal of a free person as the fundamental basis for delineating the core elements of well-being that should inform a conception of the proper ends of government, and in some instances, provides the rationale for the particular liberties as most deserving of legal protection.