or Harry Truman, and most were committed New Deal liberal Democrats. Nonetheless, they disagreed about the role that courts should play. Felix Frankfurter led a faction that insisted upon judicial self-restraint and deference to the policymaking prerogatives of the White House and Congress. Hugo Black and William O. Douglas led the opposing faction by agreeing the Court should defer to Congress in matters of economic policy but favored a more activist role for the courts in matters related to individual liberties. Warren's belief that the judiciary must seek to do justice placed him with the Black and Douglas faction. William J. Brennan Jr. became the intellectual leader of the activist faction after he was appointed to the court by Eisenhower in 1956 and complemented Warren's political skills by the strong legal skills that Warren lacked. As chief justice, Warren's most important prerogative was the power to assign opinions if he was in the majority. That power had a subtle but important role in shaping the Court's majority opinions, since different justices would write different opinions. Warren initially asked the senior associate justice, Hugo Black, to preside over conferences until he became accustomed to the processes of the Court. However, Warren learned quickly and soon was in fact, as well as in name, the Court's chief justice. Warren's strength lay in his public gravitas, his leadership skills, and his firm belief that the Constitution guaranteed natural rights and that the Court had a unique role in protecting those rights. His arguments did not dominate judicial conferences, but Warren excelled at putting together coalitions and cajoling his colleagues in informal meetings. Warren saw the US Constitution as the embodiment of American values, and he cared deeply about the ethical implications of the Court's rulings. According to Justice Potter Stewart, Warren's philosophical foundations were the "eternal, rather bromidic, platitudes in which he sincerely believed" and "Warren's great strength was his simple belief in the things we now laugh at: motherhood, marriage, family, flag, and the like." The constitutional historian Melvin I. Urofsky concludes that "scholars agree that as a judge, Warren does not rank with Louis Brandeis, Black, or Brennan in terms of jurisprudence. His opinions were not always clearly written, and his legal logic was often muddled." Other scholars have also reached this conclusion. 1950s Brown v. Board of Education Soon after joining the Court, Warren presided over the case of Brown