Three weeks later the steel companies instituted new proceedings before Judge David A. Pine of the District Court, District of Columbia.[761] Injunctive relief was now sought on grounds that the seizure of the mills, not having been authorized by statute, was unconstitutional.[762] The government’s presentation was completely prejudiced by the insistence of the Assistant Attorney General that the President’s actions be upheld on grounds of his “inherent” emergency powers.[763] The Court: “And is it ... your view that the powers of the Government are limited by and enumerated in the Constitution of the United States?” Mr. Baldridge: “That is true, Your Honor, with respect to legislative powers.” The Court: “But it is not true, you say, as to the Executive?” Mr. Baldridge: “No.” The Court: “So, when the sovereign people adopted the Constitution, it enumerated the powers set up in the Constitution but limited the powers of the Congress and limited the powers of the judiciary, but it did not limit the powers of the Executive. Is that what you say?” Mr. Baldridge: “That is the way we read Article II of the Constitution.”[764] Judge Pine ruled that the President’s action was unsupported by law and granted the injunction. While the government’s claim to an inherent emergency power may have been extreme, it was a natural culmination of the trend of judicial and scholarly interpretation of emergency powers through the Second World War. Two authoritative sources existed, each providing plausible underpinning for executive assertion of inherent emergency powers--unlimited by Constitution, Congress or Court. The first was judicial language such as the Sutherland dicta in _United States_ v. _Curtiss-Wright_.[765] The second embraced commentaries by persons generally considered qualified to write exegeses on the Constitution, wherein the previously unchallenged exercise of emergency power by the President has been viewed as controlling precedent legitimizing the acquisition of such power. Thus, as of 1952, in the minds of many, the President had built up imposing historical precedent for the exercise of executive discretion adequate to accomplish whatever purposes appeared to him essential to counter an emergency.[766] In many instances, however, such action has frequently violated explicit provisions of the Constitution or of congressional statutes.[767] Justice Frankfurter indicated his acceptance of the validity of this line of reasoning when in his concurring opinion in the _Steel Seizure_ cases he asserted that “... a systematic, unbroken, executive practice, long pursued to the knowledge of the Congress and never before questioned, engaged in by Presidents who have also sworn to uphold the Constitution, making as it were such exercise of power part of the structure of our government, may be treated as a gloss on ‘executive power’ vested in the President by Sec. 1 of Ar. II.”[768]