There were two clear political factions on the Court, the more liberal Black/Douglas wing and the conservative Jackson/Frankfurter one—Frankfurter, a great liberal as a young man, believed that the Court was a conservative institution and seemed to want to reaffirm precedent as if his vote belonged more to the Court’s past than to his own instincts. Frankfurter referred to Black and Douglas sarcastically in his letters as the “great libertarians,” and his close friend Judge Learned Hand (who longed to be on the Court himself) referred to them in letters to Frankfurter as “the Jesus Choir,” and
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