One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. Were my purely personal attitude relevant, I should wholeheartedly associate myself with the general libertarian views in the court’s opinion, representing as they do the thought and action of a lifetime. But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic. We owe equal attachment to the Constitution and are equally bound by our judicial obligations whether we derive our citizenship from the earliest or the latest immigrants to these shores. As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.... It can never be emphasized too much that one’s own opinion about the wisdom or evil of a law should be excluded altogether when one is doing one’s duty on the bench. The only opinion of our own even looking in that direction that is material is our opinion whether legislators could in reason have enacted such a law. Much as he detested the West Virginia statute, Frankfurter found it impossible to deny that reasonable legislators could have passed the flag-salute law. He was guided to this conclusion by “the light of all the circumstances” and by “the history of this question in this court.” Thirteen Justices of the Supreme Court in other years had found such laws within the constitutional authority of the States. In view of this “impressive judicial sanction,” how could the power be now prohibited to the States? In the past, said Frankfurter: this court has from time to time set its views of policy against that embodied in legislation by finding laws in conflict with what was called “the spirit of the Constitution.” Such undefined destructive power was not conferred on this court by the Constitution. Before a duly enacted law can be judicially nullified, it must be forbidden by some explicit restriction upon political authority in the Constitution. Equally inadmissible is the claim to strike down legislation because to us as individuals it seems opposed to the “plan and purpose” of the Constitution. That is too tempting a basis for finding in one’s personal views the purposes of the Founders. The uncontrollable power wielded by this court brings it very close to the most sensitive areas of public affairs. As appeal from legislation to adjudication becomes more frequent, and its consequences more far-reaching, judicial self-restraint becomes more and not less important, lest we unwarrantably enter social and political domains wholly outside our concern.