Supreme Court · Associate Justice
Lewis Powell
Republican appointee: Appointed by Richard M. Nixon (R)
Served 1971–1987 · 16 terms
Confirmed 89–1
Biography
Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1972 to 1987.
Source: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Ideology over time
Powell and the 11 justices who overlapped with Powell, 1971–1986
- Lewis Powell
- 95% credible interval
- Peer, appointed by a Democrat
- Peer, appointed by a Republican
- Court median
How to read this
Martin–Quinn scores place each justice on a single liberal–conservative dimension, estimated from their votes across terms, with scores allowed to shift from one term to the next. Higher is more conservative. The shaded band is the credible interval: wider when the record is thin, especially in a justice’s first terms, and narrower as votes accumulate.
Where Powell sits among all justices
Career average, every justice in the data set
Powell’s range across terms
Served alongside Powell
11 justicesClosest career average first. Filled dot: the peer. Ring: Powell.
How Powell voted
Every argued case Powell took part in, newest first, with how Powell voted in each: with the majority, in dissent, or in an equally divided Court. A Liberal or Conservative tag is the Supreme Court Database’s coding of who prevailed in the case, not a rating of the justices.
Data notes
The Decisions page’s argued cases with this justice’s vote from the Supreme Court Database. “Majority” includes a concurrence; a vote that dissented in part is coded by the side the justice took overall. Cases the justice sat out and equally divided cases are left out of the percentages. “Wrote” means authored an opinion. Source: Supreme Court Database (Spaeth et al.).