In a well-known passage in his famous dissent in the flag-salute
case of 1943, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote:
Our constant preoccupation with the constitutionality of legislation
rather than with its wisdom tends to preoccupation of the American
mind with a false value. The tendency of focussing attention on
constitutionality is to make constitutionality synonymous with wisdom,
to regard a law as all right if it is constitutional. Such an
attitude is a great enemy of liberalism. . . . Reliance for the most
precious interests of civilization, therefore, must be found outside
of their vindication in courts of law
