Justices Hugo Black and Wiley Blount Rutledge took no part in the discussion or decision.

Justices Douglas, Black, Burton, and Minton were predisposed to overturn Plessy.

Before the Court could hear the oral arguments, Justices Black and Harlan retired.

Though no official vote was taken, Justice Black and Chief Justice Burger wanted to reverse McMillan ’ s order, while Justices Douglas, Harlan, Brennan and Marshall wanted a strong affirmation of the order ; Justices White, Stewart and Blackmun did not express a strong feeling either way.

Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas wrote separate dissenting opinions.

Justices Jackson and Hugo Black had profound professional and personal disagreements dating back to October 1941, the first term in which they served together on the Supreme Court.

Two Justices, Hugo Black and Potter Stewart, filed dissents.

Justices Black and Douglas concurred separately.

Brennan also talked down Justices Black and Douglas from their usual absolutist positions to achieve a compromise.

He wrote Truman several letters criticizing Justices Robert H. Jackson and Hugo Black, referring to Black as a demagogue.

Here again, Frankfurter opposed the views of Justices Warren, Black, Douglas, and Brennan ( though Frankfurter lost 4 – 3 ).

Justice Frankfurter was in his time the leader of the conservative faction of the Supreme Court ; he would for many years feud with liberals like Justices Black and Douglas.

Frankfurter saw justices with ideas different from his own as part of a more liberal " Axis " – these opponents were chiefly Justices Black and Douglas, but would also include Murphy and Rutledge ; the group would for years oppose Frankfurter's judicially restrained ideology.

Furthermore, he generally shied away from the absolutist positions of Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, being very amenable to compromise.

Justices Hugo Black and John M. Harlan II dissented.

According to Frankfurter, Murphy was part of the more liberal " Axis " of justices on the Court, along with Justices Rutledge, Douglas, and Black ; the group would for years oppose Frankfurter's judicially-restrained ideology.

Laws that " shock the conscience " of the Court were generally deemed unconstitutional in Rochin v. California, though concurring Justices Black and Douglas argued that pumping a defendant's stomach for evidence should have been deemed unconstitutional on the narrower ground that it violates the Fifth Amendment's ban on self-incrimination.

Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, First Amendment " literalists ," dissented in Roth, arguing vigorously that the First Amendment protected obscene material.

He did not, however, go as far as Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, who suggested that all libel laws were unconstitutional.

In an opinion by Justice Stanley Forman Reed, which three other justices ( Chief Justice Vinson and Associate Justices Hugo Black, Robert H. Jackson ) joined, and with which Justice Felix Frankfurter concurred, the Court held that re-executing Francis did not constitute double jeopardy or cruel and unusual punishment.

In concurring opinions, Justices Douglas joined by Justices Black and Murphy, and Justice Jackson held that the law violated the Privileges or Immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It was not until Roosevelt began appointing new Justices, starting with Hugo Black in August 1937, that a majority was formed which completely rejected Lochnerian reasoning.

Justice Douglas threatened to write a dissent from the reargument order ( he and the other liberal Justices were suspicious that Rehnquist and Powell would vote to uphold the statute ), but was coaxed out of the action by his colleagues, and his dissent was merely mentioned in the reargument order without further statement or opinion.

The three concurring opinions were written by Justices Clark, Douglas and Harlan.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote the opinion for a unanimous court, joined by Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun and Lewis F. Powell.

* Justices Byron White and William O. Douglas expressed similar concerns about the apparent arbitrariness with which death sentences were imposed under the existing laws.

Dissenting, however, Justice Harold Burton ( joined by Justices William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, and Wiley Rutledge ) argued,

Alumni of the Columbia Law Review include United States Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chief Judge of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Wilfred Feinberg, United States Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr., Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Director of the National Economic Council, Stephen Friedman ( PFIAB ); Columbia Law School professor Herbert Wechsler, Yale Law School professors Felix S. Cohen and Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., New York University Law School professor Samuel Estreicher, Michigan Law School professor Mark D. West, and former New York Governor George Pataki, amongst others.

A plurality of the Court ( Justices Douglas, White, Marshall and Brennan, who wrote the plurality's opinion ) found the military's benefit policy unconstitutional, because there was no reason why military wives needed benefits any more than similarly situated military husbands.

Writing dissenting opinions were Associate Justices William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy ( in whose opinion Justice Rutledge joined ), and Wiley B. Rutledge ( in whose opinion Justice Murphy joined ).

Justices Frankfurter and Jackson concurred in the Court's result, for they found no merit in the railroad's claim.

Justices Holmes and Brandeis shied from this test, but concurred with the final result.

However, the plurality decision jointly written by Justices Souter, O ' Connor, and Kennedy is recognized as the lead opinion with precedential weight because each of its parts were concurred in by at least two other Justices, albeit different ones for each part.

The remainder of the decision did not command a majority, but at least two other Justices concurred in judgment on each of the remaining points.

William Rehnquist, Byron White, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas — the six Justices who did not join the plurality opinion — wrote or joined opinions in which they partially concurred and partially dissented from the decision.

Justices Ginsburg and Breyer concurred in judgment, but stated that they did not subscribe to the Court's belief that the affirmative measures in question would be unnecessary in 25 years.

Two Justices concurred in part and dissented in part to the decision.

* Justices Brennan and Marshall concurred on the grounds that the death penalty was " cruel and unusual punishment " proscribed by the Eighth Amendment as incompatible with the evolving standards of decency of a contemporary society.

Justices Blackmun and Powell, and Chief Justice Burger concurred in the result, but, in an opinion written by Justice Powell, declined to decide whether discrimination on the basis of sex should attract strict scrutiny.

The Supreme Court, however, unanimously ruled against him in Hirabayashi v. United States ( 1943 ), albeit with three Justices filing separate opinions that concurred with the Court's decision only with certain reservations.

Justices Bogdanski, Longo, and Barber concurred in the decision, and Justice Bogdanski filed a concurring opinion.

Justices White, Blackmun and Souter concurred, but voiced concern that the Court was foreclosing this area for review.

In Marks v. United States, 430 U. S. 188 ( 1977 ), the Supreme Court of the United States explained how the holding of a case should be viewed where there is no majority supporting the rationale of any opinion: “ When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds .” Marks, 430 U. S. at 193.

The decision, penned by Associate Justice Mario Guarina III and concurred in by Associate Justices Martin S. Villarama, Jr.