This formula allowed more scope for curbing free speech in cases where, as the government believed with Communism, the danger was grave, whether it was immediate or not. Critics and disappointed liberals accused Hand of placing his concern for judicial restraint ahead of freedom of speech. Hand confided to a friend that, if it had been up to him, he would "never have prosecuted those birds". In the opinion of Kathryn Griffith, "The importance of Learned Hand's philosophy in terms of practical application to the courts lies generally in his view of the pragmatic origin of all law, but most specifically in his unique interpretation of the Bill of Rights." Hand proposed that the Bill of Rights was not law at all but a set of "admonitory" principles to ensure the fair exercise of constitutional powers. He therefore opposed the use of its "due process of law" clauses as a pretext for national intervention in state legislation. He even advocated the removal of those clauses from the Constitution. In Hand's analysis, "due process" is no more than a stock phrase to cover a long tradition of common law procedure. He contended that the term had inflated in scope beyond the meaning intended in the Bill of Rights. The result was the misuse of due process to invade rights that the Constitution was designed to protect. For Hand, a law passed by an elected body should be presumed to meet the test of due process. A court that decides otherwise and strikes down such a law is acting undemocratically. Hand maintained this stance even when the Supreme Court struck down anti-liberal laws that he detested. His reasoning has never been widely accepted. Critics of his position included his colleague on the Second Circuit, Jerome Frank, who wrote: "[I]t seems to me that here, most uncharacteristically, Judge Hand indulges in a judgement far too sweeping, one which rests on a too-sharp either-or, all or nothing, dichotomy. ... Obviously the courts cannot do the whole job. But just as obviously, they can sometimes help to arrest evil popular trends at their inception." Richard Posner, an influential appellate judge reviewing a biography of Hand, asserts that Hand "displayed a positive antipathy toward constitutional law. To exaggerate only a little, he didn't think judges should have anything to do with it." Posner suggests that although Hand is remembered today as one of the three greatest judges in American history, his status as a truly "great judge" was not based on his "slight" contributions to First Amendment jurisprudence or other fields of constitutional law, but rather on his decisions in other areas such as antitrust, intellectual property, and tort law.