Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
Today’s Justice of the Day is: LEWIS F. POWELL, JR. Justice Powell was born on this day, September 19, in 1907.
Justice Powell was born in Suffolk, Virginia, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He attended Washington and Lee University, earning a B.S. in 1929, and later earned an LL.B. from the Washington and Lee University Law School in 1931 and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1932.
Immediately after leaving Harvard, Justice Powell entered private practice in Richmond, Virginia, and would work there continuously as a private attorney until his appointment to the SCUS. From 1942 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Army’s Air Corps, before becoming Chairman of the Richmond Public School Board six years after leaving the military. Justice Powell remained in that office until 1961, during which time he grappled with the enormously controversial issue of desegregation that arose thanks to his future colleagues’ ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). He rose to the top of the legal profession (and likely came to the attention of future President Richard M. Nixon) in 1964 when he was elected President of the American Bar Association.
Justice Powell was nominated by President Nixon on October 22, 1971, to a seat vacated by Justice Hugo Black. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 6, and received his commission three days later. Justice Powell took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on January 7, 1972, and served on the Burger and Rehnquist Courts. He assumed senior status on June 26, 1987, and his service was terminated on August 25, 1998, due to his death.
Justice Powell was a fairly consistent moderate in an era when the SCUS was almost exactly evenly divided between conservatives and liberals, and consequently held enormous sway over how the Court ruled in many close cases. His influence can be seen by the fact that he helped craft much of the SCUS’s early doctrine on the constitutionality of affirmative action, as well as his backing of the Opinion of the Court in Roe v. Wade (1973). Justice Powell became one of the very few Members of the SCUS to ever publicly apologize for a vote he or she cast when he expressed regret for his support of the majority opinion in the odious Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) case.