was powell considered a liberal by byrd democrat standards?

[freepcrusher]

I mean a guy born in 1907 in virginia would probably have a major paper trail of supporting segregation and what not, but I don't think there was any evidence of him being one.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Powell was a nominal Democrat who probably voted for Eisenhower and Nixon.  Powell was also a lawyer for tobacco interests for many years as an attorney.

Powell was a conservative, but not a MOVEMENT conservative.  He was one of the moderate, centrist Justices that held sway on the  SCOTUS for a number of years in the late 1970s/early 1980s.  While he approached the center from the right, he was not a conservative in the sense that Rehnquist and Scalia were, or even in the sense that Burger was.  He also had an unbreakable rule on the Court (according to Bob Woodward in The Brethren) in that he would never allow an argument to endanger a personal relationship on the Court.  Perhaps we'd have better government today if more folks in public office considered Powell's principle.

[freepcrusher]

well the reason i asked if maybe he was liberal by byrd standards is that while its maybe a bad idea to compare two different things (judicial arbiter vs elected official) it seems that Virginia had a lot of really reactionary democrats back then (Byrd Jr, Satterfield, Daniel). I don't know if any of those three were lawyers by trade, but hypothetically, if they were on the sc, they would probably be a lot worse than powell.

I would have a hard time believing any of those three would have ruled that the death penalty, as currently constituted, is arbitrary and therefore an eighth amendment violation (furman) or that while blatant affirmative action is unconstitutional, diversity is still a compelling interest of an academic institution (bakke).

[Geoffrey Howe]

I would have a hard time believing any of those three would have ruled that the death penalty, as currently constituted, is arbitrary and therefore an eighth amendment violation (furman) or that while blatant affirmative action is unconstitutional, diversity is still a compelling interest of an academic institution (bakke).

Powell dissented in Furman. He was part of the plurality in Gregg which demanded greater safeguards than White/Burger/Rehnquist wanted.