Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. (September 19, 1907 – August 25, 1998) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1972 to 1987.
Born in Suffolk, Virginia, he graduated from Washington and Lee University School of Law and Harvard Law School and served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He worked for Hunton & Williams, a large law firm in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on corporate law and representing clients such as the Tobacco Institute. His 1971 Powell Memorandum became the blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council. In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Powell to succeed the late Associate Justice Hugo Black. He retired from the court during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, and was eventually succeeded by Anthony Kennedy.
His tenure largely overlapped with that of Chief Justice Warren Burger, and Powell was often a key swing vote on the Burger Court. His majority opinions include United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975), Gregg v. Georgia (1976), First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), Solem v. Helm (1983), and McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), and he wrote an influential opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). He notably joined the majority in controversial cases such as United States v. United States District Court (1972), Roe v. Wade (1973), Milliken v. Bradley (1974), Harris v. McRae (1980), Plyler v. Doe (1982), and Bowers v. Hardwick (1986).
Powell was born in Suffolk, Virginia in 1907, the son of Mary Lewis (Gwathmey) and Louis Franklin Powell. Powell attended Washington and Lee University, where he became president of his fraternity, managing editor of the student newspaper, and a member of the yearbook staff. His major was commerce, but he also studied law. Powell had always planned on becoming a lawyer because he viewed their roles as shaping history. He graduated in 1929 with a B.A. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He also was named recipient of the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award for "generous service to others".
Powell then attended Washington and Lee University School of Law and in 1931 graduated as valedictorian of his class. He received his LL.M. from Harvard Law School in 1932, writing his thesis on relations between the Virginia Court of Appeals and the State Corporation Commission. He is one of two U.S. Supreme Court justices to have earned an LL.M.
He was elected president of the student body as an undergraduate with the help of Mosby Perrow Jr., and the two served together on the Virginia State Board of Education in the 1960s. Powell was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and the Sigma Society. At a leadership conference, he met Edward R. Murrow, and they became close friends.
In 1936, he married Josephine Pierce Rucker with whom he had three daughters and one son. She died in 1996.
During World War II, he first tried to join the United States Navy but was rejected because of poor eyesight, so he joined the US Army Air Forces as an Intelligence officer. After receiving his commission as a first lieutenant in 1942, he completed training at bases near Miami, Florida and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was assigned to the 319th Bombardment Group, which moved to England later that year. He served in North Africa during Operation Torch and was later assigned to the Headquarters of the Northwest African Air Forces. There, Powell served in Sicily during the Allied invasion of Sicily.
In August 1943, he was assigned to the intelligence staff of the Army Air Forces in Washington, D.C. Slated for assignment as an instructor at the facility near Harrisburg, he worked instead on several special projects for the AAF headquarters until February 1944. He was then assigned to the intelligence staff of the Department of War and then the intelligence staff of the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe. While there, Colonel Powell wrote in the aftermath of the February 1945 bombing of Dresden that "personally, I consider this very fortunate indeed as the German people are being taught for the first time in modern history what it means to have war on their own soil."
Powell was assigned to the Ultra project, as one of the officers designated to monitor the use of intercepted Axis communications. He worked in England and in the Mediterranean Theater and ensured that the use of Ultra information was in compliance with the laws of war, and that the use of such information did not reveal the source, which would have alerted that the code had been broken.
Powell advanced through the ranks to colonel, and received the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, and French Croix de Guerre with bronze palm. He was discharged in October 1945.
In 1941, Powell served as chairman of the American Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division.
Powell was a partner for more than a quarter of a century at Hunton, Williams, Gay, Powell and Gibson, a large white shoe Virginia law firm, with its primary office in Richmond, now known as Hunton Andrews Kurth. Powell practiced primarily in the areas of corporate law, especially in the fields of business acquisitions, securities regulation, bankruptcy, real estate and railroad litigation.
From 1961 to 1962 Powell served as chair of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Economics of Law Practice, which later evolved into the ABA Law Practice Division. During his tenure as chair of the committee, The Lawyers Handbook was first published and distributed to all attorneys who joined the ABA that year. In its preface, Powell wrote, "The basic concept of freedom under law, which underlies our entire structure of government, can only be sustained by a strong and independent bar. It is plainly in the public interest that the economic health of the legal profession be safeguarded. One of the means toward this end is to improve the efficiency and productivity of lawyers."
In 1964, he was elected president of the ABA. Powell led the way in attempting to provide legal services to the poor, and he made a key decision to cooperate with the federal government's Legal Services Corporation. Powell was also involved in the development of Colonial Williamsburg, where he was both a trustee and general counsel. From 1964 until his court appointment in 1971, he was a board member of Philip Morris and acted as a contact point for the tobacco industry with Virginia Commonwealth University. Through his law firm, Powell represented the Tobacco Institute and various tobacco companies in numerous cases.
Virginia government (1951–1970)
Powell played an active role in local community affairs. From 1951 to 1961, he served on the Richmond School Board and was its chairman from 1952 to 1961. Powell presided over the school board at a time when the Commonwealth of Virginia was locked in a campaign of defiance against the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which desegregated public schools. Powell's law firm, although not Powell himself, represented one of the defendant school districts in Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was consolidated later into Brown.
The Richmond School Board had no authority at the time to force integration, however, as control over attendance policies had been transferred to the state government. Powell, like most white Southern leaders of his day, did not speak out against the state's defiance, but he fostered close working relationships with many black leaders, such as civil rights lawyer Oliver Hill, some of whom offered key support for Powell's Supreme Court nomination. In 1990, Powell swore in Virginia's first black governor, Douglas Wilder.