Powell took umbrage at the refusal by the Federal Communications Commission to grant the tobacco companies “equal time” to respond to their critics on television and argued that the companies’ First Amendment rights were being infringed. Powell’s legal argument failed in the courts, increasing his sense of corporate embattlement. Jeffrey Clements, in Corporations Are Not People, suggests Powell’s defense of the tobacco companies was a harbinger of the corporate rights movement and a big part of what led him to push in his memo for conservatives to empower more pro-business courts.
