Eulogy

By David Westin

When I began my year as Justice LEWIS POWELL's law clerk, my co-clerks and I asked him at lunch to discuss his views on abortion. Powell was a true conservative and a product of Mr. Jefferson's Virginia. Why, then, did he join the majority in Roe v. Wade? His answer wasn't about constitutional theory or the "Framers' Intent." Instead, he told the story of a young, black messenger at his old law firm in Richmond. The youth came to him terrified that he would be arrested for the death of his girlfriend, whom he'd helped get an illegal abortion at the hands of a "back-alley butcher." Powell was moved by the youth's dilemma--and by the injustice and risk that a more affluent couple could avoid by going to a state where abortions were legal. Though the consummate judge, Powell dealt with people as they were, not just as clients or employees or adversaries. He listened to all sides; he understood the theoretical as well as the practical; he knew that sometimes how one reached a decision was as important as the decision itself. He had the courage to face facts as they were, not as he would like them to be. And in that, Justice Powell represented the best we could hope to become: a genuinely wise man for whom balanced judgment represented a prime virtue.

--David Westin, President, ABC News