Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Description

Supreme Court Justices, at least in the modern era, have not been drawn from the ranks of the nation's preeminent practicing lawyers. The path to the Court has not been a brilliant career in private practice, but rather success in politics or government service. Earl Warren and Hugo Black came to the Court directly from electoral politics. William O. Douglas, Byron White, Arthur Goldberg and William Rehnquist held appointive office in the executive branch immediately preceding appointment. William Brennan, Potter Stewart, Harry Blackmun, Warren Burger and John Paul Stevens served as lower court judges in the state or federal systems for varying periods of time before being promoted to the Court. Only John Harlan, Lewis F. Powell and, perhaps, Abe Fortas, can be said to have earned a place on the Supreme Court because they were consummate practitioners of the traditional lawyers' art. While Thurgood Marshall and Arthur Goldberg each achieved eminence as lawyers representing broad social movements, in fact their legal practice was a mirror image of the Harlan-Powell experience. As “movement” lawyers, Justices Marshall and Goldberg often looked to the courts for broad doctrinal assistance designed to aid a category of similarly situated persons, only one of whom was actually before the Court. In contrast, Justices Harlan and Powell as “private” lawyers sought to resolve conflicts pragmatically, guided solely by the interests of their clients. As “private” lawyers, Harlan and Powell viewed the legal process, not as an engine for the enunciation of novel doctrine, but as a method of resolving a narrow dispute between discrete parties, ideally in a manner acceptable to each. Given the similarity of their practice backgrounds, a close intellectual bond links Lewis F. Powell to John Harlan as the only recent occupants of the “lawyer's” seat on the Supreme Court. The cast of mind and habits of thought which Lewis F. Powell, Jr. cultivated during thirty-five years of successful private practice followed him to the Supreme Court. As a Justice he remains cautious, pragmatic, skeptical of bright line distinctions and doctrinaire solutions, mistrustful of governmental interference in private affairs, and, above all, committed to rigorous logical analysis as an aid to predictability and a guarantor of principled decision-making. Not surprisingly, therefore, Justice Powell has, during his first six years on the Court, sought to avoid doctrinaire decision-making and the adoption of hard-edged ideological positions. Instead, his characteristic approach has been to focus on the narrow facts of the case before him; to identify with precision the competing interests of the parties; and, if possible, to evolve a middle of the road solution which respects the core concerns of each. Only after he is satisfied that the core concerns of the parties are in irrevocable conflict will he balance one set of interests against the other and determine which should take precedence. Such a balancing process is, of course, inevitably subjective and in Justice Powell's case, it has tended to reflect a personal reluctance to substitute his judgment for the judgment of legislators and administrative officials—unless deeply felt traditional values such as free speech, family life and property rights are threatened. When, however, he perceives a threat to such traditional values, Justice Powell has not hesitated to use the full power of the judiciary in their defense. Appointed to the Court late in his career at the age of sixty-four, few men have approached the Supreme Court with the training and qualifications of Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Born in 1907 in a suburb of Norfolk, Virginia, Justice Powell graduated from Washington and Lee College in 1929, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and served as president of the student body. He completed the three-year course of study at Washington and Lee Law School in two years and was graduated first in his class in 1931. After a year at Harvard Law School, where he studied under Felix Frankfurter, Powell returned to Richmond and entered the private practice of law. In 1937 he was made a partner in the prestigious Richmond firm of Hunton, Williams, Gay, Powell & Gibson, which, by the time of Powell's nomination to the Court by Richard Nixon in 1971, had grown to over one hundred lawyers. World War II interrupted Powell's rise to eminence as a private lawyer. He served thirty-three months as an Air Force intelligence officer in North Africa, rising from 1st Lieutenant to Colonel and receiving the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the French Croix de Guerre with Palm. Upon his return to Richmond, Powell resumed his practice and rapidly gained national recognition as a corporate lawyer. By the time of his nomination, Powell's legal ability and business acumen had led to his election as a director of eleven major companies, including Phillip Morris, Squibb, Ethyl Corporation and Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. By then a pillar of the American legal establishment, Powell served as president of the American Bar Association in 1964-1965 and as president of the American College of Trial Lawyers from 1968-1970. He was president of the American Bar Foundation, the research arm of the ABA, from 1969 until his nomination to the Court in 1971. Powell's activities as a member of the National Advisory Committee on Legal Services to the Poor and his service as Vice President of the National Legal Aid and Defender Society were instrumental in securing the support of the organized bar for the concept of government subsidized legal services for the poor. Paralleling Powell's professional accomplishments is a lifelong interest in education and family life. He served as president of the Richmond Family Services Society and, from 1952-1961, was chairman of the Richmond School Board, where he urged a moderate course in complying with Brown v. Board of Education. Powell succeeded in keeping the Richmond public schools open despite the calls for “massive resistance” to the Brown decree which closed the Norfolk public schools. For several years after his retirement from the Richmond School Board, Powell was a member of the Virginia Board of Education. In 1970, Powell was named a member of the Board of Trustees of Washington & Lee University, where he had been instrumental in achieving its voluntary desegregation. Powell was also active in drafting the revised Virginia Constitution and the City Manager Charter reform for the City of Richmond. Despite Powell's moderation on the racial issue, however, he cannot be classed as a leader in bringing racial equality to the South. At the time of his nomination, Powell's one-hundred man firm had never employed a black lawyer; Powell was himself a member of two clubs which denied membership to blacks; and the Fourth Circuit had labelled certain practices of the Richmond School Board under Powell's stewardship as unconstitutionally perpetuating racial segregation. Bradley v. School Board of City of Richmond, 317 F.2d 429 (4th Cir. 1963). See also, 345 F.2d 310 (4th Cir. 1965). Given the professional qualifications which Justice Powell brought to the Court and given his indefatigable work habits and independence of mind, his emergence as an intellectual leader of the moderate center of the Burger Court is not surprising. The impact of Powell's mind and legal craftsmanship has been felt across the entire legal spectrum. In general, he has sought to establish a pragmatic, centrist alternative to the often extreme doctrinal solutions to legal problems pressed upon the Supreme Court by both the left and the right.

Source Publication

The Justices of the United States Supreme Court 1789-1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions

Source Editors/Authors

Leon Friedman, Fred L. Israel

Publication Date

1969

Edition

1969

Volume Number

V: The Burger Court, 1969—1978

Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

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