Certainly judicial power exists if the only question be whether this court is empowered to make an enforceable decision. But to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment as authority for the judicial abolition of school segregation would be an invasion of the legislative power and an exact reversal of the intent of the framers of the amendment. Yes, the court has power. Hughes’ cynical remark contains grim truth: Judges are restrained only by the Constitution, and the Constitution is what the judges say it is. But if the ethical tradition of our society teaches us one thing (wholly apart from the judicial tradition), it is that might and right ought always to be carefully distinguished. And on no nine men in the world does this responsibility rest more heavily than on the nine members of the court. Defense counsel in the school cases quoted Mr. Justice Cardozo: “Judges have, of course, the power, though not the right, to ignore the mandate of a statute, and render judgment in despite of it. They have the power, though not the right, to travel beyond the walls of the interstices, the bounds set to judicial innovation by precedent and custom. None the less, by that abuse of power, they violate the law.” Judges are not supposed to violate the law, to constitute themselves a super-legislature, to plunge beyond the bounds of the Constitution itself. And no body of critics has said this more frequently than the judges themselves. In the famous case of _United States_ v. _Butler_, (297 U. S. 1), holding that the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935 exceeded the power vested in the Congress to regulate commerce, the Supreme Court divided violently--but both the majority and the minority, in their discussions of judicial power and responsibility, made the same points. “The only power the court has,” said the majority, “if such it may be called, is the power of judgment. This court neither approves nor condemns any legislative policy. Its delicate and difficult office is to ascertain and declare whether the legislation is in accordance with, or in contravention of, the provisions of the Constitution; and, having done that, its duty ends.” Harlan Stone, in the magnificent dissent in which Brandeis and Cardozo joined, expressed the responsibility of the court in this fashion: The power of courts to declare a statute unconstitutional is subject to two guiding principles of decision which ought never to be absent from judicial consciousness. One is that courts are concerned only with the power to enact statutes, not with their wisdom. The other is that while unconstitutional exercise of power by the executive and legislative branches of the government is subject to judicial restraint, the only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint. For the removal of unwise laws from the statute books, appeal lies not to the courts but to the ballot and to the processes of democratic government.