The Supreme Court's decision has been widely denounced ever since, both for how overtly racist the decision was and its crucial role in the near destruction of the United States four years later. Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions—Chief Justice Hughes called it the Court's greatest self-inflicted wound." Junius P. Rodriguez said that it is "universally condemned as the U.S. Supreme Court's worst decision". Historian David Thomas Konig said that it was "unquestionably, our court's worst decision ever."