Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1907-1998) was a corporate lawyer who became a U.S. Supreme Court justice. He became the intellectual leader of the Court's moderate center until his 1987 retirement.

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. was born on September 19, 1907, in Suffolk, Virginia, son of a comfortable middle-class family. Powell attended Washington & Lee College, from which he graduated in 1929, and Harvard Law School, where he studied under Felix Frankfurter, completing a L.L.M. degree in 1932. Powell married Josephine M. Rucker on May 2, 1936, and was the father of three daughters and a son. Admitted to the Virginia bar, he entered private practice in Richmond in 1937 and became a partner in the prestigious Richmond firm of Hunton, Williams, Bay, Powell & Gibson. During World War II he served as an Air Force intelligence officer in North Africa. Returning to his Richmond practice, he gained national recognition as a corporate lawyer, subsequently serving...