The most requested document from Justice Powell’s papers, the memo Attack On American Free Enterprise System, is invoked in a new documentary film.   Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream aired Monday as part of the PBS series Independent Lens.  In the film, Yale Political Science Professor Jacob Hacker states:

“Because of Ralph Nader and other corporate reformers, business
was pushed back strongly on the defensive in the early 1970’s and
of course this was a tough time for business and for the economy
overall, profits were down, the economy was reeling from the oil
price shocks and what did business do? Well, they followed the
prescription of the future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, who
wrote an influential memo for the chamber of commerce saying that
business needed to organize. Businessmen of the world unite might
have been the slogan for these efforts. They created new
organization, they invested enormous new sums in politics, they
started to change their strategies, …”