Editor’s note: Our article on Leonard Leo was so popular, we’re offering this excerpt of part one from the article in that series, from the Lowdown’s archives in March 2022. How did this happen to us, this installation of a rabidly partisan judicial oligarchy over America's democratic values and aspirations? I hate to sound conspiratorial, but ... this is, in fact, the product of a long-term, right-wing political conspiracy--and there's even a smoking gun revealing the origins of the plot. It's a 15-page confidential memo to the Chamber of Commerce, written in 1971 by Lewis Powell--at the time a rich corporate lawyer,