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.

[3] Powell set out to attend Washington and Lee University where he became president of his fraternity, managing editor of the student newspaper, and a member of the yearbook staff.

While there Colonel Powell wrote in the aftermath of the 13–15 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 practiced primarily in the areas of corporate law, especially in the fields of business acquisitions, securities regulation, bankruptcy, real estate[14] and railroad litigation.

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.

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.

[16] On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell was commissioned by his neighbor Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., a close friend and education director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to write a confidential memorandum for the chamber entitled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," an anti-Communist and anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America.

[17] His experiences as a corporate lawyer and a director on the board of Phillip Morris from 1964 until his appointment to the Supreme Court made him a champion of the tobacco industry who railed against the growing scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer deaths.

[17] He argued, unsuccessfully, that tobacco companies' First Amendment rights were being infringed when news organizations were not giving credence to the cancer denials of the industry.

The Powell Memorandum ultimately came to be a 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 Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and inspired the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.

"[19] Political scientist Aaron Good describes it as an "inverted totalitarian manifesto" designed to identify threats to the established economic order following the democratic upsurge of the 1960s.

[24] Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians."

[25][26] This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell's court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections by independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech.

Although written confidentially for Sydnor at the Chamber of Commerce, it was discovered by Jack Anderson, a columnist with The Washington Post, who reported on its content a year later, after Powell had joined the Supreme Court.

Anderson alleged that Powell was trying to undermine the democratic system; however, in terms of business's view of itself in relation to government and public interest groups, the memo could be alternatively read to simply convey conventional thinking among businessmen at the time.

The explicit goal of the memo was not to destroy democracy, though its emphasis on political institution-building as a concentration of big business power, particularly updating the Chamber's efforts to influence federal policy, has reportedly had that effect.

[28] During the 2024 presidential election season, the Powell memo was called out as the basis for the Heritage Foundation's audacious and wide-reaching Project 2025 agenda for their hoped-for next Republican administration.

[33] Powell's nomination generated no controversy and he took over the seat of Hugo Black after being confirmed by the Senate 89–1 on December 6, 1971 (the lone "nay" came from Oklahoma Democrat Fred R.

In Coker v. Georgia (1977), a convicted murderer escaped from prison and, in the course of committing an armed robbery and other offenses, raped an adult woman.

Justice Powell, acknowledging that the woman had been raped, expressed the view that "the victim [did not] sustain serious or lasting injury"[38] and voted to set the death penalty aside.

Powell wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), which overturned a Massachusetts law restricting corporate contributions to referendum campaigns not directly related to their business.

[42] From his days in counterintelligence during World War II, Powell believed in the need for government secrecy and urged the same position on his colleagues during the Court's consideration of 1974's United States v. Nixon.

In 1982, Powell joined the 5–4 majority opinion in Plyler v. Doe holding that a Texas law forbidding illegal immigrant children from public education was unconstitutional.

In 1990, after his retirement from the Court, he said, "I think I made a mistake in the Hardwick case," marking one of the few times a justice expressed regret for one of his previous rulings.

[47] Powell also expressed post-retirement regret over his majority opinion in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), where he voted to uphold the death penalty against a study that demonstrated that, except as punishment for the most violent of crimes, murderers sentenced for killing white victims were up to forty times more likely to receive the death penalty than people who killed black victims.

The second, Douglas H. Ginsburg, withdrew his name from consideration after admitting to having smoked marijuana both as a college undergraduate and with his students while a law professor.

[51] In her 2002 book, The Majesty of the Law, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "For those who seek a model of human kindness, decency, exemplary behavior, and integrity, there will never be a better man."

Powell's personal and official papers were donated to his alma mater, Washington and Lee University School of Law, where they are open for research, subject to certain restrictions.