Posted by Orin Kerr:
Lewis F. Powell and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
Over at the [1]American Prospect, Mark Schmitt pokes holes in a
puzzling theory that apparently is quite widely circulated but I don't
think I have ever heard before: that the blueprint of modern
conservative legal thought and activism was authored by that
mild-mannered Southern gentleman and quintessential centrist, Lewis F.
Powell. Schmitt writes:
The story of the Rise of the Right is the great fable in recent
American politics, one that is endlessly revised as it is told and
retold by its participants and by envious observers from the left
bank. In recent versions, a central place in the story has been
given to a memo written in 1971 by Richmond corporate lawyer (and
future U.S. Supreme Court justice) Lewis Powell to a neighbor who
was active in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Powell�s eight-page memo, titled �Attack on American Free
Enterprise System,� was a call for American business to defend its
interests against criticisms of capitalism emanating �from the
college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and
literary journals,� and particularly from Ralph Nader (whose model
of public interest litigation and publicity was then at its
height). Powell recommended to the chamber a number of strategies,
including building a group of scholars-on-call to defend the
system; monitoring and critiquing the media; and building legal
organizations that could fight back in the courts.
The memo was circulated within Chamber of Commerce circles and
became public after Powell�s confirmation to the court, when
journalist Jack Anderson unearthed it to question Powell�s judicial
temperament. After that, it seems to have been forgotten.
Today, though, the Powell Memo is routinely invoked as the
blueprint for virtually all of the conservative intellectual
infrastructure built in the 1970s and 1980s -- �a memo that changed
the course of history,� in the words of one analysis of the
anti-environmental movement; �the attack memo that changed
America,� in another account.
Never heard of [2]this Powell memo? I hadn't, either, as far as I
recall, at least until it was mentioned briefly in [3]Jeffrey Rosen's
piece on the alleged Constitution-in-Exile movement a few weeks ago.
Fortunately, Schmitt has good news: the apparently "canonical" view
that Lewis F. Powell is the sorcerer behind the Vast Right Wing
Conspiracy is false.
References
1.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9606
2. http://www.mediatransparency.org/stories/powellmanifesto.htm
3.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/magazine/17CONSTITUTION.html?ex=1271390400&en=6d742054285e3ae1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
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