Who is Lewis F. Powell?

From Wikipedia:
Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr. (September 19, 1907 – August 25, 1998) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He developed a reputation as a judicial moderate, and was known as a master of compromise and consensus-building. He was also widely well regarded by contemporaries due to his personal good manners and politeness. He has become infamous for drafting the Powell Memo, a confidential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that describes a strategy for the corporate takeover of the dominant public institutions of American society.

Powell's Memo:
Based in part on his experiences as a corporate lawyer and as a representative for the tobacco industry with the Virginia legislature, he wrote the Powell Memo[2] to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding politics and law in the U.S. and may have sparked the formation of one or more influential right-wing think tanks.[3]
In August 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's request to become Associate Justice of Supreme Court, Lewis Powell sent to the leadership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce the "Confidential Memorandum", better known as the Powell Memorandum.[4] It sounded an alarm with its title, "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System." The previous decade had seen the increasing regulation of many industries. 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." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements.
In an extraordinary prefiguring of the social goals of business that would be felt over the next three decades, Powell set his main goal: changing how individuals and society think about the corporation, the government, the law, the culture, and the individual. Shaping public opinion on these topics became, and would remain, a major goal of business.




Footnote references:

1. ^ Powell's inclusion in the Sigma Society is acknowledged by Chief Justice William Rehnquist: Rehnquist, William H "A tribute to Lewis F. Powell, Jr." Washington and Lee Law Review. Feb 1, 2011. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3655/is_199901/ai_n8829121/.
2. ^ Bob Woodward; Scott Armstrong (1981). The Brethren: inside the Supreme Court. Avon Books. p. 188. ISBN 9780380521838.
3. ^ Frank Snepp, Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took On the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Secrecy and Free Speech (New York: Random House, 1999), 349–350.