Over many years, a coalition that included the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, the American Tort Reform Association and many individual companies applied consistent pressure to legislatures, regulators and courts to successfully stem the tide of class action lawsuits, curb massive damages awards and raise the bar for tort filings. Powell’s prodding helped fuel the tort reform movement. In the years after the Memorandum, the advocacy of individual companies and interest groups such as the Chamber became much more sophisticated. The solutions he identified were simple: weighing in on important court cases through friend-of-the-court briefs and working to achieve equal air time for pro-business messages in the media and in schools. But what these steps required was not so simple: a coordinated effort on a large scale by leaders at the highest levels of corporations of all sizes. In the stormy Vietnam War era, American opinion of business had soured, driven in part by left-leaning politicians, but also, more troubling to Powell, by mainstream media and thinkers.
The Powell Memorandum, as it became known, is an example of sharp legal thinking applied to a complex public relations challenge. Then a Partner at law firm Hunton & Williams, Powell encouraged a sweeping advocacy campaign in defense of capitalism’s reputation – a call being sounded again today with equal urgency. Powell Jr wrote a confidential memo to the US Chamber of Commerce that ultimately changed the course of business litigation for decades.
Two months before he was nominated to the US Supreme Court in 1971, Lewis F.
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