WASHINGTON -- Retired Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., a dominant figure on the modern Supreme Court whose voice remained uniquely calm amid even the fiercest constitutional tempests, died at his home in Richmond yesterday. He was 90, less than a month short of 91.

A reluctant justice who joining the court after twice refusing presidential appointments to the bench, Mr. Powell, over a tenure of more than 15 years, held what was commonly considered the single most decisive vote on a court regularly and often angrily split 5-4.

His legacy includes critical tie-breaking votes that favored affirmative action, saved abortion rights, insulated presidents from legal challenges, and denied constitutional protection for homosexual acts.

A leader of the American bar but never a judge before, Mr. Powell quietly helped steer a fractious court toward decisions that "set the course of American constitutional law for the better part of a generation," in the assessment of his biographer, John C. Jeffries Jr., a University of Virginia law professor and former Powell law clerk.

President Clinton praised Justice Powell for opinions that were "a model of balance and judiciousness," and for following the law "without an ideological agenda and regardless of his personal views."

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said Justice Powell "was the very embodiment of judicial temperament: receptive to the ideas of his colleagues, fair to the parties to the case, but ultimately relying on his own seasoned judgment."

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who succeeded Mr. Powell, noted that the justice had gone to the court "with a towering reputation as a marvelous lawyer" and quickly showed that "the lawyer's skill soon becomes the judge's excellence."

Justice Antonin Scalia, not always on Mr. Powell's side in Supreme Court voting, praised him as "a Virginia gentleman," with "countless qualities of social grace and civic virtue."

So influential had Mr. Powell become as a justice that his retirement in 1987 put the court's future direction at stake. President Ronald Reagan and a Democratic Senate butted heads over filling the vacancy, and a judge far more conservative than Mr. Powell -- Robert H. Bork -- was cast aside as a replacement.

Political mire

In the aftermath of that episode, Supreme Court appointments became more contentious, drawing the court into a deepening political mire that Mr. Powell privately found offensive, an affront to an institution he never mentioned without reverence.

Born in Suffolk, Va., and a descendant of the first settlers at Jamestown, Mr. Powell became a lawyer after getting two law degrees at Washington and Lee University, followed by further study at Harvard Law School.

As the head of the American Bar Association, he pioneered the idea that even the most high-priced lawyers should give free time to handle the legal woes of the poor.

As a school board member in Virginia, the reserved Southerner helped dampen the raging fires of racial hostility in his native state when the Supreme Court ordered public schools desegregated.

Justice Powell took his seat on the court at age 64, believing he was too old for the job. He even tried to back out of his appointment in 1971, but was persuaded to accept by President Richard M. Nixon, who was filling the vacancy left by the late Alabamian, Justice Hugo L. Black Jr.

Mr. Powell often noted, wryly, that Mr. Nixon had chosen him for the court mainly because he, like Black, was a Southerner at a time when the president was trying to build Republican political fortunes in Dixie.

When Justice Powell retired, Nixon wrote in a private note that "when you were reluctant to accept appointment to the Supreme Court because of your age, I observed that 10 years of Lewis Powell on the court was worth 20 years for anyone else. I was right."

When he joined the court, Mr. Powell recalled later in an interview, "I didn't have a long-term philosophy about any aspect of the court's work. I decided the cases one at a time."

He added: "I had no ambition to be a judge," and: "I did not want to leave Richmond."

The justice's centrist philosophy and his influence on the court are most closely matched today by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who said yesterday: "Justice Powell was one of the finest people I have ever known. He served his nation with enormous grace and distinction."

She and he were early allies, after she became the court's first woman justice in 1981. His position then as the holder of the key "swing" vote is now hers.

Affirmative action in doubt

With Justice O'Connor, though, the current court's center has moved further to the right. And the retired justice lived to see his most important single contribution -- his 1978 opinion in the so-called Bakke case, upholding affirmative action for the first time -- facing a doubtful future in a new era of constitutional conservatism.

He and Justice O'Connor disagreed on one of the most difficult constitutional issues -- the right to abortion. She pushed the court to the brink of overturning the Roe vs. Wade precedent in 1986, but Justice Powell saved it by helping create a 5-4 majority. He said later that he never had any doubt that the Roe ruling was correct; in fact, he made up his mind quickly in 1972 to favor abortion rights and never wavered.

Later, five years after Mr. Powell had retired, Justice O'Connor was unwilling to be the deciding vote to overturn Roe, and herself became the fifth vote to preserve most of it in a 1992 ruling.

After his retirement, Justice Powell said he regretted his decisive vote in 1985 against establishing a constitutional right of privacy for homosexual conduct. He also said he had come to believe he was wrong in supporting the death penalty while on the bench -- another field of law in which his vote had been a controlling one.

Though outwardly austere, Mr. Powell was warm and generous in private encounters, and allowed himself an occasional tease -- as when he tried to persuade a Virginia lawyer to send a son to Washington and Lee University because its campus was close to so many colleges for women.

Gems in his papers

He maintained a lifelong affection for Washington and Lee, and his papers are now housed in a wing of the university library on the campus in Lexington. Scholars continue to find gems of behind-the-scenes Supreme Court history in those papers, internal secrets that Mr. Powell never would mention publicly.

After retiring from the court in 1987, he regularly worked for another decade in his office at the court among the 20 red-bound volumes of his Supreme Court opinions and amid his World War II photos and memorabilia from his service as an Army pilot and intelligence officer.

In an interview two years ago, when he was 88, he insisted he was healthy, but also confessed that "old age has eliminated my capacity to do the things lawyers in prominent positions are supposed to do." A humidifier, to keep the air clean and clear, hummed in the background, helping him to keep the common cold at bay.

Though a Supreme Court retiree, he frequently sat in Richmond as a judge on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Powell once noted, matter-of-factly, that the Supreme Court had only once overruled an appeals court decision of his.

Failing health ultimately forced Mr. Powell into full retirement about two years ago.

He had been ill from time to time since then, and died in his " sleep from pneumonia at 4: 30 a.m. yesterday, according to a statement issued by the Supreme Court.

His wife, Josephine Rucker Powell, died in 1996. Mr. Powell is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. The court said yesterday that funeral arrangements had not yet been made.

Powell's major decisions

Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. filled 20 volumes with his Supreme Court opinions. Here are some of his most significant opinions from his 15 years on the bench:

Affirmative action: With the other eight justices split 4-4, Powell's controlling opinion for the first time upheld the constitutionality of racial preferences in college admissions, so long as hard-and-fast quotas are not used. Regents vs. Bakke, 1978.

Homosexuals: Powell cast the deciding vote and wrote a brief separate opinion when the court denied constitutional protection for gays who engage in private homosexual acts -- a decision he renounced after he retired. Bowers vs. Hardwick, 1986.

Presidents: He wrote the 5-4 majority ruling barring lawsuits against presidents over their official actions. Nixon vs. Fitzgerald, 1982.

Juries: His opinion for the first time declared that individuals may not be kept off criminal case juries solely because of their race. Batson vs. Kentucky, 1986.

Death penalty: Powell's opinion rejected the argument that the death penalty is unconstitutional because it is enforced more often against blacks than whites -- a decision he repudiated after he retired. McCleskey vs. Kemp, 1987.

Wiretapping: He wrote a unanimous decision requiring court fTC approval for electronic eavesdropping, even in national security cases. U.S. vs. District Court, 1972.

Abortion: His opinion recognized a teen-ager's limited right to an abortion without her parents' consent. Bellotti vs. Baird, 1979. His opinion for a 6-3 majority strongly reaffirmed the right to abortion when it was first coming under serious challenge within the court. Akron vs. Akron Center, 1983.

Families: Powell wrote the ruling that for the first time barred cities from controlling which members of a family can live together in one house. Moore vs. East Cleveland, 1977.

Public schools: His opinion found no constitutional right of children in poor school districts to equality in state funds. San Antonio Schools vs. Rodriguez, 1973.

Mentally retarded: Powell opinion established a constitutional right to proper treatment for mentally retarded individuals in state hospitals. Youngberg vs. Romeo, 1982.

Pub Date: 8/26/98