During World War II, he wrote the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans ordered by the president Franklin Roosevelt.

[12] Black opposed the doctrine of substantive due process (the pre-1937 Supreme Court's interpretation of this concept made it impossible for the government to enact legislation that conservatives claimed interfered with the freedom of business owners),[4]: 107–108  and believed that there was no basis in the words of the Constitution for a right to privacy, voting against finding one in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965).

[4]: 241–242  He also took conservative positions in cases such as Shapiro v. Thompson, Goldberg v. Kelly, Tinker v. Des Moines, and Cohen v. California where he distinguished between "pure speech" and "expressive conduct".

The national audience was shocked to hear Black speak of a $5 million electric industry lobbying campaign attempt to defeat the Wheeler–Rayburn bill, known as the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 that had passed in July.

[22] Critics of Black's lobbying committee in leading newspapers, such as the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, described his investigative methods as both "inquisitorial" and "terroristic" and charged that his goal was to intimidate and silence anti-New Dealers.

Most controversially, Black, with the backing of the Roosevelt administration, sought to get FCC to order Western Union and other telegraph companies to provide access to copies to several million telegrams sent during the period of February 1 to September 1, 1935.

"[27] Soon after the failure of the court-packing plan, President Roosevelt obtained his first opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice when conservative Willis Van Devanter retired.

[4][page needed] Roosevelt admired Black's use of the investigative role of the Senate to shape the American mind on reforms, his strong voting record, and his early support, which dated back to 1933.

Chambers v. Florida (1940), an early case where Black ruled in favor of African-American criminal defendants who experienced due process violations, later helped put these concerns to rest.

The concurrence indicated that Jackson voted to deny the petition not because he approved of Black's participation in the case, but on the "limited grounds" that each Justice was entitled to determine for himself the propriety of recusal.

There is hope, however, that, in calmer times, when present pressures, passions and fears subside, this or some later Court will restore the First Amendment liberties to the high preferred place where they belong in a free society.

[43] Yet while he often voted with them on the Warren Court, he occasionally took his own line on some key cases, most notably Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which established that the Constitution protected a right to privacy.

[citation needed] Black had a number of law clerks who became notable in their own right, including Judges Louis F. Oberdorfer, Truman McGill Hobbs, Guido Calabresi, and Drayton Nabers Jr., Professors John K. McNulty, Stephen Schulhofer, and Walter E. Dellinger III, Mayor David Vann, FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson, US solicitor general Lawrence G. Wallace, and trial lawyer Stephen Susman.

[4]: 120–121 In a 1968 public interview, reflecting on his most important contributions, Black put his dissent from Adamson "at the top of the list, but then spoke with great eloquence from one of his earliest opinions in Chambers v. Florida (1940).

[citation needed] Black forged the 5–4 majority in the 1967 decision Fortson v. Morris, which cleared the path for the Georgia State Legislature to choose the governor in the deadlocked 1966 race between Democrat Lester Maddox and Republican Howard Callaway.

Douglas also saw the issue as a continuation of the earlier decision Gray v. Sanders, which had struck down Georgia's County Unit System, a kind of electoral college formerly used to choose the governor.

He took a "literal" or absolutist reading of the provisions of the Bill of Rights[4]: 115–118  and believed that the text of the Constitution is absolutely determinative on any question calling for judicial interpretation, leading to his reputation as a "textualist" and as a "strict constructionist".

In his dissent to Griswold (1965), he wrote: I realize that many good and able men have eloquently spoken and written, sometimes in rhapsodical strains, about the duty of this Court to keep the Constitution in tune with the times.

[56] Black insisted that judges rely on the intent of the Framers as well as the "plain meaning" of the Constitution's words and phrases (drawing on the history of the period) when deciding a case.

'[59][60]Black also joined Douglas's dissent in Breithaupt v. Abram which argued that substantive due process prevented police from making an involuntary intrusion into a person's body, in this case a blood sample taken while the suspect was unconscious.

[citation needed] Black authored the court's majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States, which validated Roosevelt's decision to initiate the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II.

The decision is an example of Black's belief in the limited role of the judiciary; he validated the legislative and executive actions that led to internment, saying "it is unnecessary for us to appraise the possible reasons which might have prompted the order to be used in the form it was".

[citation needed] In four bar applicant appeals to the Supreme Court, Black advanced the argument that a person's political affiliation or beliefs, without action, was not enough to establish evidence of bad moral character.

Thus, in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), he voted to allow newspapers to publish the Pentagon Papers despite the Nixon Administration's contention that publication would have security implications.

The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.He rejected the idea that the government was entitled to punish "obscene" speech.

He joined the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which required law enforcement officers to warn suspects of their rights prior to interrogations, and consistently voted to apply the guarantees of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments at the state level.

[92] By the late 1940s, Black believed that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause was a constitutional prohibition against any state governmental actions that discriminated on the basis of race in an invidious or capricious manner.

During his last full term on the court, he participated in a unanimous decision, Graham v. Richardson, striking down statutes that restricted welfare benefits to legal aliens but not to U.S. citizens.

Pursuant to Justice Black's wishes, the coffin was "simple and cheap" and was displayed at the service to show that the costs of burial are not reflective of the worth of the human whose remains were present.

[4]: 16  Newman said Black "disliked the Catholic Church as an institution" and gave numerous anti-Catholic speeches in his 1926 election campaign to Ku Klux Klan meetings across Alabama.