Nevertheless, Frankfurter’s questions exposed the weakness of the plaintiffs’ historical justifications. Rankin’s astonishing idea--that Congress never really had thought much about what it was doing, during all the years since 1868 in which it had provided annually for segregated schools in Washington--was echoed in feeble attempts to explain away the judicial precedents. Jackson and Reed asked Rankin how he could account for decisions of Northern courts, in such cases as _Garnes_, _King_, and _Cory_, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment did not reach public schools. Rankin replied weakly that “apparently there was no detailed study of the history and background of the Fourteenth Amendment.” This was too much for Jackson: “These men lived with the thing,” he said; “they didn’t have to go to books.” The question that most troubled Jackson, however, was the key question of judicial power. He wondered aloud if it were appropriate “for the court, after all that has intervened, to exercise this power instead of leaving it to Congress.” Thurgood Marshall, for the plaintiffs, insisted that theories of a dynamic, growing Constitution abundantly justified the court in reversing Plessy and in placing its own contemporary construction on the Amendment. John W. Davis, for the defense, strongly disagreed: “At some time to every principle comes a moment of repose, when it has been so often announced, so confidently relied upon, so long continued, that it passes the limits of judicial discretion and disturbance.”