Frankfurter had previously articulated a similar view in a concurring opinion written for the 1951 "Dennis v. United States" Supreme Court ruling. The decision affirmed, by a 6–2 margin, the conviction of eleven communist leaders for conspiring to overthrow the US government under the Smith Act. In it, he again argued that judges "are not legislators, that direct policy-making is not our province." He recognized that curtailing the free speech of those who advocate the overthrow of government by force, also risked stifling criticism by those who did not, writing that " is a sobering fact that in sustaining the convictions before us we can hardly escape restriction on the interchange of ideas."