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Korematsu v. United States

Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II. The decision has been widely criticized,[1] with some scholars describing it as "an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry",[2] and as "a stain on American jurisprudence".[3] The case is often cited as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time.[4][5][6] Chief Justice John Roberts repudiated the Korematsu decision in his majority opinion in the 2018 case of Trump v. Hawaii.[7][8]

Korematsu v. United States
Argued October 11–12, 1944
Decided December 18, 1944
Full case nameFred Korematsu vs. United States
Citations323 U.S. 214 (more)
65 S. Ct. 193; 89 L. Ed. 194; 1944 U.S. LEXIS 1341
Case history
PriorCertiorari to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 140 F.2d 289 (9th Cir. 1943)
Holding
The exclusionary order which caused the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was permissible. Executive Order 9066 was constitutional.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Harlan F. Stone
Associate Justices
Owen Roberts · Hugo Black
Stanley F. Reed · Felix Frankfurter
William O. Douglas · Frank Murphy
Robert H. Jackson · Wiley B. Rutledge
Case opinions
MajorityBlack, joined by Stone, Reed, Frankfurter, Douglas, Rutledge
ConcurrenceFrankfurter
DissentRoberts
DissentMurphy
DissentJackson
Laws applied
Executive Order 9066; U.S. Const. amend. V
Overruled by
Trump v. Hawaii (2018; obiter dictum)

In the aftermath of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, authorizing the U.S. War Department to create military areas from which any or all Americans might be excluded. Subsequently, the Western Defense Command, a U.S. Army military command charged with coordinating the defense of the West Coast of the United States, ordered "all persons of Japanese ancestry, including aliens and non-aliens" to relocate to internment camps. However, a 23-year-old Japanese-American man, Fred Korematsu, refused to leave the exclusion zone and instead challenged the order on the grounds that it violated the Fifth Amendment.

In a majority opinion joined by five other justices, Associate Justice Hugo Black held that the need to protect against espionage by Japan outweighed the rights of Americans of Japanese ancestry. Black wrote that "Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race", but rather "because the properly constituted military authorities ... decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast" during the war against Japan. Dissenting justices Frank Murphy, Robert H. Jackson, and Owen J. Roberts all criticized the exclusion as racially discriminatory; Murphy wrote that the exclusion of Japanese "falls into the ugly abyss of racism" and resembled "the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy."

The Korematsu opinion was the first instance in which the Supreme Court applied the strict scrutiny standard of review to racial discrimination by the government; it is one of only a handful of cases in which the Court held that the government met that standard. Korematsu's conviction was voided by a California district court in 1983 on the grounds that Solicitor General Charles H. Fahy had suppressed a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that held that there was no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as spies for Japan. The Japanese-Americans who were interned were later granted reparations through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Background

 
Japanese American Assembly Center at Tanforan race track, San Bruno

In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the report of the First Roberts Commission, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, authorizing the War Department to create military areas from which any or all Americans might be excluded, and to provide for the necessary transport, lodging, and feeding of persons displaced from such areas. On March 2, 1942, the U.S. Army Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, commander of the Western Defense Command, issued Public Proclamation No. 1, demarcating western military areas and the exclusion zones therein, and directing any "Japanese, German, or Italian aliens" and any person of Japanese ancestry to inform the U.S. Postal Service of any changes of residence.[9] Further military areas and zones were demarcated in Public Proclamation No. 2.

In the meantime, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson mailed to Senator Robert Rice Reynolds and House Speaker Sam Rayburn draft legislation authorizing the enforcement of Executive Order 9066. By March 21, Congress had enacted the proposed legislation, which Roosevelt signed into law.[10] On March 24, 1942, Western Defense Command began issuing Civilian Exclusion orders, commanding that "all persons of Japanese ancestry, including aliens and non-aliens" report to designated assembly points. With the issuance of Civilian Restrictive Order No. 1 on May 19, 1942, Japanese Americans were forced to move into relocation camps.[11]

Meanwhile, Fred Korematsu was a 23-year-old Japanese-American man who decided to stay at his residence in San Leandro, California, instead of obeying the order to relocate; however, he knowingly violated Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 of the U.S. Army, even undergoing plastic surgery in an attempt to conceal his identity.[12] Korematsu argued that Executive Order 9066 was unconstitutional and that it violated the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment was selected over the Fourteenth Amendment due to the lack of federal protections in the Fourteenth Amendment. He was arrested and convicted. No question was raised as to Korematsu's loyalty to the United States. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit eventually affirmed his conviction,[13] and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Decision

Black's majority opinion

 
Justice Hugo Black

The decision of the case, written by Justice Hugo Black, found the case largely indistinguishable from the previous year's Hirabayashi v. United States decision, and rested largely on the same principle: deference to Congress and the military authorities, particularly in light of the uncertainty following Pearl Harbor. Justice Black further denied that the case had anything to do with racial prejudice:

Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily, and, finally, because Congress, reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders—as inevitably it must—determined that they should have the power to do just this.[14]

In his diaries, Justice Felix Frankfurter reported that Justice Black told the justices as reason for deferring to the executive branch: "Somebody must run this war. It is either Roosevelt or us. And we cannot."[15]

While Korematsu is regularly described as upholding the internment of Japanese Americans, the majority opinion expressly declined to reach the issue of internment on the ground that Korematsu's conviction did not present that issue, which it said raised different questions. The Court cross-referenced its decision the same day in Ex Parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944), in which the Court ruled that a loyal Japanese American must be released from detention.[16]

Frankfurter's concurrence

 
Justice Felix Frankfurter

Justice Frankfurter's concurrence reads in its entirety:

According to my reading of Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34, it was an offense for Korematsu to be found in Military Area No. 1, the territory wherein he was previously living, except within the bounds of the established Assembly Center of that area. Even though the various orders issued by General DeWitt be deemed a comprehensive code of instructions, their tenor is clear, and not contradictory. They put upon Korematsu the obligation to leave Military Area No. 1, but only by the method prescribed in the instructions, i.e., by reporting to the Assembly Center. I am unable to see how the legal considerations that led to the decision in Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, fail to sustain the military order which made the conduct now in controversy a crime. And so I join in the opinion of the Court, but should like to add a few words of my own.
The provisions of the Constitution which confer on the Congress and the President powers to enable this country to wage war are as much part of the Constitution as provisions looking to a nation at peace. And we have had recent occasion to quote approvingly the statement of former Chief Justice Hughes that the war power of the Government is "the power to wage war successfully". Hirabayashi v. United States, supra, at 93, and see Home Bldg. & L. Assn. v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398, 426. Therefore, the validity of action under the war power must be judged wholly in the context of war. That action is not to be stigmatized as lawless because like action in times of peace would be lawless. To talk about a military order that expresses an allowable judgment of war needs by those entrusted with the duty of conducting war as "an [p. 225] unconstitutional order" is to suffuse a part of the Constitution with an atmosphere of unconstitutionality. The respective spheres of action of military authorities and of judges are, of course, very different. But, within their sphere, military authorities are no more outside the bounds of obedience to the Constitution than are judges within theirs. "The war power of the United States, like its other powers... is subject to applicable constitutional limitations", Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries Co., 251 U.S. 146, 156. To recognize that military orders are "reasonably expedient military precautions" in time of war, and yet to deny them constitutional legitimacy, makes of the Constitution an instrument for dialectic subtleties not reasonably to be attributed to the hard-headed Framers, of whom a majority had had actual participation in war. If a military order such as that under review does not transcend the means appropriate for conducting war, such action by the military is as constitutional as would be any authorized action by the Interstate Commerce Commission within the limits of the constitutional power to regulate commerce. And, being an exercise of the war power explicitly granted by the Constitution for safeguarding the national life by prosecuting war effectively, I find nothing in the Constitution which denies to Congress the power to enforce such a valid military order by making its violation an offense triable in the civil courts. Compare Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson, 154 U.S. 447; 155 U.S. 3, and Monongahela Bridge Co. v. United States, 216 U.S. 177. To find that the Constitution does not forbid the military measures now complained of does not carry with it approval of that which Congress and the Executive did. That is their business, not ours.[14]

Murphy's dissent

 
Justice Frank Murphy

Justice Frank Murphy issued a vehement dissent, saying that the exclusion of Japanese "falls into the ugly abyss of racism", and resembles "the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy."[14] Murphy argued that collective punishment for Japanese Americans was an unconstitutional response to any disloyalty that might have been found in a minority of their cohort. He also compared the treatment of Japanese Americans with the treatment of Americans of German and Italian ancestry, as evidence that race, and not emergency alone, led to the exclusion order which Korematsu was convicted of violating:

I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.[14]

Justice Murphy's two uses of the term "racism" in this opinion, along with two additional uses in his concurrence in Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railway Co., decided the same day, are among the first appearances of the word "racism" in a United States Supreme Court opinion. The first appearance was in Justice Murphy's concurrence in Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944).[16] The term was also used in other cases, such as Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 U.S. 304 (1946) and Oyama v. California, 332 U.S. 633 (1948). It then disappeared from the court's lexicon for 18 years—it reappeared in Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131 (1966). It did not appear in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967),[17] even though that case did talk about racial discrimination and interracial marriages.

Justice Murphy's dissent is considered the strongest of the three dissenting opinions and, since the 1980s, has been cited as part of modern jurisprudence's categorical rejection of the majority opinion.[18]

Roberts's dissent

 
Justice Owen Roberts

Justice Roberts's dissent also acknowledges the racism inherent in the case although he does not use the word. He recognized that the defendant was being punished based solely upon his ancestry:

This is not a case of keeping people off the streets at night, as was Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, [p. 226] nor a case of temporary exclusion of a citizen from an area for his own safety or that of the community, nor a case of offering him an opportunity to go temporarily out of an area where his presence might cause danger to himself or to his fellows. On the contrary, it is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States. If this be a correct statement of the facts disclosed by this record, and facts of which we take judicial notice, I need hardly labor the conclusion that Constitutional rights have been violated.[14]

Jackson's dissent

 
Justice Robert Jackson

By contrast, Justice Robert Jackson's dissent argued that "defense measures will not, and often should not, be held within the limits that bind civil authority in peace", and that it would perhaps be unreasonable to hold the military, who issued the exclusion order, to the same standards of constitutionality that apply to the rest of the government. "In the very nature of things", he wrote, "military decisions are not susceptible of intelligent judicial appraisal." He acknowledged the Court's powerlessness in that regard, writing that "courts can never have any real alternative to accepting the mere declaration of the authority that issued the order that it was reasonably necessary from a military viewpoint."[14]

He nonetheless dissented, writing that, even if the courts should not be put in the position of second-guessing or interfering with the orders of military commanders, that does not mean that they should have to ratify or enforce those orders if they are unconstitutional. Jackson writes, "I do not think [the civil courts] may be asked to execute a military expedient that has no place in law under the Constitution. I would reverse the judgment and discharge the prisoner."[19] Indeed, he warns that the precedent of Korematsu might last well beyond the war and the internment:

A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency. Even during that period, a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes.[14]

Jackson further warned:

Of course the existence of a military power resting on force, so vagrant, so centralized, so necessarily heedless of the individual, is an inherent threat to liberty. But I would not lead people to rely on this Court for a review that seems to me wholly delusive. The military reasonableness of these orders can only be determined by military superiors. If the people ever let command of the war power fall into irresponsible and unscrupulous hands, the courts wield no power equal to its restraint. The chief restraint upon those who command the physical forces of the country, in the future as in the past, must be their responsibility to the political judgments of their contemporaries and to the moral judgments of history.[14]

Jackson acknowledged the racial issues at hand, writing:

Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity and a citizen of California by residence. No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here he is not law abiding and well disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived. [...] [H]is crime would result, not from anything he did, said, or thought, different than they, but only in that he was born of different racial stock. Now, if any fundamental assumption underlies our system, it is that guilt is personal and not inheritable. Even if all of one's antecedents had been convicted of treason, the Constitution forbids its penalties to be visited upon him. But here is an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign. If Congress in peace-time legislation should enact such a criminal law, I should suppose this Court would refuse to enforce it.[14]

Subsequent history

Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians

In 1980, Congress established a commission to evaluate the events leading up to the issuance of Executive Order 9066 and accompanying military directives and their impact on citizens and resident aliens, charging the commission with recommending remedies. Discussing the Korematsu decision in their 1982 report entitled Personal Justice Denied, this Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CCWRIC) concluded that "each part of the decision, questions of both factual review and legal principles, has been discredited or abandoned," and that, "Today the decision in Korematsu lies overruled in the court of history."[20][21]

Conviction overturned

Korematsu challenged his conviction in 1983 by filing before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California a writ of coram nobis, which asserted that the original conviction was so flawed as to represent a grave injustice that should be reversed. As evidence, he submitted the conclusions of the CCWRIC report as well as newly discovered internal Justice Department communications demonstrating that evidence contradicting the military necessity for the Executive Order 9066 had been knowingly withheld from the Supreme Court. Specifically, he said Solicitor General Charles H. Fahy had kept from the Court a wartime finding by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Ringle Report, that concluded very few Japanese represented a risk and that almost all of those who did were already in custody when the Executive Order was enacted.[22] While not admitting error, the government submitted a counter-motion asking the court to vacate the conviction without a finding of fact on its merits. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel denied the government's petition, and concluded that the Supreme Court had indeed been given a selective record, representing a compelling circumstance sufficient to overturn the original conviction. She granted the writ, thereby voiding Korematsu's conviction, while pointing out that since this decision was based on prosecutorial misconduct and not an error of law, any legal precedent established by the case remained in force.[23][24]

2011 DOJ admission of error

On May 20, 2011, Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal released an unusual statement denouncing one of his predecessors, Solicitor General Charles H. Fahy.[22] He faulted Fahy for having "suppressed critical evidence" in the Hirabayashi and Korematsu cases before the Supreme Court during World War II, specifically the Ringle Report's conclusion that there was no indication Japanese Americans were acting as spies or sending signals to enemy submarines. The rulings in the 1980s that overturned the convictions of Korematsu and Hirabayashi concluded that failure to disclose the Ringle Report, along with an initial report by General De Witt that demonstrated racist motivations behind the military orders, represented a fatal flaw in the prosecution of their cases before the Supreme Court. Katyal noted that Justice Department attorneys had actually alerted Fahy that failing to disclose the Ringle Report's existence in the briefs or argument in the Supreme Court "might approximate the suppression of evidence". Thus, Katyal concluded that Fahy "did not inform the Court that a key set of allegations used to justify the internment" had been doubted, if not fully discredited, within the government's own agencies.

Katyal therefore announced his office's filing of a formal "admission of error". He reaffirmed the extraordinary duty of the Solicitor General to address the Court with "absolute candor," due to the "special credence" the Court explicitly grants to his court submissions.[25]

21st century reactions

Eleven lawyers who had represented Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Minoru Yasui in successful efforts in lower federal courts to nullify their convictions for violating military curfew and exclusion orders sent a letter dated January 13, 2014,[26] to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. In light of the appeal proceedings before the U.S. Supreme Court in Hedges v. Obama, the lawyers asked Verrilli to ask the Supreme Court to overrule its decisions in Korematsu, Hirabayashi (1943) and Yasui (1943). If the Solicitor General shouldn't do this, they asked that the United States government to "make clear" that the federal government "does not consider the internment decisions as valid precedent for governmental or military detention of individuals or groups without due process of law [...]."[27]

On February 3, 2014, Justice Antonin Scalia, during a discussion with law students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law, said that "the Supreme Court's Korematsu decision upholding the internment of Japanese Americans was wrong, but it could happen again in war time."[28] In October 2015 at Santa Clara University, Scalia told law students that Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion in Korematsu was the past court opinion he admired most, adding "It was nice to know that at least somebody on the court realized that that was wrong."[29]

Donald Trump's Presidential election led Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to advocate for Trump to implement immigration controls like the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System.[30][31] One Trump supporter, Carl Higbie, said that Jimmy Carter's 1980 restriction on Iranian immigration, as well as the Korematsu decision, gives legal precedent for a registry of immigrants.[32] Critics of Higbie[33] argued that Korematsu should not be referenced as precedent.[34][35][36] Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein argued that the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 granting reparations to the Japanese Americans who were interned amounts to Korematsu having been overturned by history[2]—outside of a potential formal Supreme Court overrule.[37] Another critic of Higbie described Korematsu as a "stain on American jurisprudence".[3]

According to Harvard University's Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Noah Feldman, "a decision can be wrong at the very moment it was decided—and therefore should not be followed subsequently."[38] Justice Anthony Kennedy applied this approach in Lawrence v. Texas to overturn Bowers v. Hardwick and thereby strike down anti-sodomy laws in 14 states. The implication is that decisions which are wrong when decided should not be followed even before the Court reverses itself, and Korematsu has probably the greatest claim to being wrong when decided of any case which still stood.[38] Legal scholar Richard Primus applied the term "Anti-Canon" to cases which are "universally assailed as wrong, immoral, and unconstitutional"[37] and have become exemplars of faulty legal reasoning.[1] Plessy v. Ferguson is one such example, and Korematsu has joined this group—as Feldman then put it, "Korematsu's uniquely bad legal status means it's not precedent even though it hasn't been overturned."[38]

Rejection in Trump v. Hawaii

Chief Justice Roberts, in writing the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii, stated that Korematsu v. United States was wrongly decided, essentially disavowing the decision and indicating that a majority of the court no longer finds Korematsu persuasive.[39]: 38 [better source needed] Quoting Justice Robert H. Jackson's dissent from Korematsu, the Chief Justice stated:

The dissent's reference to Korematsu, however, affords this Court the opportunity to make express what is already obvious: Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—'has no place in law under the Constitution.'

— Trump v. Hawaii, slip op. at 38 (quoting 323 U.S., at 248 (Jackson, J., dissenting))[39]: 38 

Roberts also added: "The forcible relocation of U.S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority."[39]: 38 [40][21] Congress regards Korematsu as having been overruled by Trump v. Hawaii.[41]

Rejection in dissent of United States v. Zubaydah

Justice Gorsuch, writing in his dissent of United States v. Zubaydah, reiterated the fact that Korematsu was negligent. Gorsuch criticised the court for allowing "state interest" as a justification for "suppressing judicial proceedings in the name of national security." He used Korematsu as a justification against doing such.

Justice Gorsuch dissented stating:

In Korematsu v. United States, the President persuaded this Court to permit the forced internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II. The President did so in part by relying on a military report that insisted immediate action was imperative to national security. The report, however, contained information executive officials knew to be false at the time....And still more years passed before this Court formally repudiated its decision. (Internal citations omitted)

— Justice Neil Gorsuch, United States v. Zubaydah 595 U. S. ___ (Gorsuch, J., dissenting)[42]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Primus, Richard A. (1998). "Canon, Anti-Canon, and Judicial Dissent". Duke Law Journal. 48 (2): 243–303. doi:10.2307/1373107. JSTOR 1373107.
  2. ^ a b Fein, Bruce (November 25, 2016). "History Overrules Odious Supreme Court Precedent". Huffington Post. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  3. ^ a b Takei, Carl (November 27, 2016). "The incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II does not provide a legal cover for a Muslim registry". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  4. ^ Matheson, Scott M. (2009). Presidential Constitutionalism in Perilous Times. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-674-03161-6. OCLC 226213461.
  5. ^ Schwartz, Bernard (1997). A Book of Legal Lists : The Best and Worst in American Law, with 100 Court and Judge Trivia Questions. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-19-802694-5. OCLC 435911877.
  6. ^ Savage, David G. (January 2009). "How Did They Get It So Wrong? Left and right differ on the decisions, but each side has its 'worst' list". ABA Journal. 95 (1): 20–21. ISSN 0747-0088. JSTOR 27846961.
  7. ^ "Trump v. Hawaii and Chief Justice Roberts's "Korematsu Overruled" Parlor Trick | ACS". American Constitution Society. June 29, 2018. Retrieved July 14, 2019.
  8. ^ culture, New to The New Criterion? Subscribe to the premier journal of; Price, Now at Its Lowest. "Facially neutral, racially biased by Wen Fa & John Yoo". The New Criterion. Retrieved September 26, 2022.
  9. ^ Qtd. in "A Brief History of Japanese American Relocation During World War II". National Park Service.
  10. ^ Burton, J.; et al. (2002). Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295981563. Qtd. in "A Brief History of Japanese American Relocation During World War II". National Park Service.
  11. ^ tenBroek, Jacobus (1953). "Wartime Power of the Military over Citizen Civilians within the Country". California Law Review. 41 (2): 167–208. doi:10.2307/3478076. JSTOR 3478076.
  12. ^ Hata, Donald; Hata, Nadine (1995). Japanese Americans and World War II: Exclusion, Internment, and Redress. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson. p. 18. ISBN 9780882959092.
  13. ^ Korematsu v. United States, 140 F.2d 289 (9th Cir. 1943).
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h i Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (Supreme Court of the United States 1944).
  15. ^ Stephen Breyer: America’s Courts Can’t Ignore the World. In: The Atlantic, September 2018
  16. ^ a b Ex parte Mitsuye Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (Supreme Court of the United States 1944).
  17. ^ Lopez, Ian F. Haney (2007). "'A nation of minorities': race, ethnicity, and reactionary colorblindness" (PDF). Stanford Law Review. 59 (4): 985–1064.[permanent dead link]
  18. ^ Anita S. Krishnakumar, On the Evolution of the Canonical DISSENT Rutgers Law Review 52, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 781-826
  19. ^ Barrett, John (2005). "A Commander's Power, a Civilian's Reason: Justice Jackson's 'Korematsu' Dissent". Law and Contemporary Problems. 68 (2): 63. JSTOR 27592094.
  20. ^ Personal Justice Denied. Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. December 1982. pp. 1, 238–239.
  21. ^ a b Savage, Charlie (June 26, 2018). "Korematsu, Notorious Supreme Court Ruling on Japanese Internment, Is Finally Tossed Out". The New York Times. Retrieved June 26, 2018.
  22. ^ a b Savage, David G. (May 24, 2011). "U.S. official cites misconduct in Japanese American internment cases". Los Angeles Times.
  23. ^ Robinson, Greg (2001). By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 113. ISBN 9780674006393.
  24. ^ "Court Reverses Korematsu Conviction - Korematsu v. U.S., 584 F.Supp. 1406, 16 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1231 (N.D.Cal. Apr 19, 1984)". LSU Law Center. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
  25. ^ Tracy, Russo (May 20, 2011). "Confession of Error: The Solicitor General's Mistakes During the Japanese-American Internment Cases". Retrieved April 7, 2013.
  26. ^ Minami, Dale; Bannai, Lorraine; Tomaki, Donald; Irons, Peter; Yamamoto, Eric; Miyasato, Leigh Ann; Nagae, Pegy; Kawakami, Rod; Kai, Karen; Bannai, Kathryn A.; Rusky, Robert (January 13, 2014). "Re: Hedges v. Obama Supreme Court of the United States Docket No. 17-758" (PDF). Retrieved April 29, 2014 – via SCOUSblog.
  27. ^ Denniston, Lyle (January 16, 2014). "A plea to cast aside Korematsu". SCOTUSblog. Retrieved April 29, 2014.
  28. ^ Weiss, Debra Cassens (February 4, 2014). "Scalia: Korematsu was wrong, but 'you are kidding yourself' if you think it won't happen again". American Bar Association. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  29. ^ Egelko, Bob (October 30, 2015). "Scalia's favorite opinion? You might be surprised". Politics Blog. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved November 25, 2015.
  30. ^ Caldwell, Alicia A. (November 21, 2016). "Trump supporter pitches hard-line immigration plan for Homeland Security". PBS NewsHour. PBS. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  31. ^ Raymond, Adam K. (November 21, 2016). "Trump Cabinet Hopeful Kris Kobach Forgets Cover Sheet, Exposes DHS Plan for All to See". New York. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  32. ^ Kopan, Tal; Kurtz, Jason. "Trump backer further explains internment comments". CNN. Retrieved June 26, 2018.
  33. ^ Abadi, Mark (November 17, 2016). "Megyn Kelly shut down a Trump supporter who said Japanese internment camps were precedent for a Muslim registry". Business Insider (Australia). Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  34. ^ Hawkins, Derek (November 17, 2016). "Japanese American internment is 'precedent' for national Muslim registry, prominent Trump backer says". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
  35. ^ Bromwich, Jonah Engel (November 17, 2016). "Trump Camp's Talk of Registry and Japanese Internment Raises Muslim Fears". The New York Times. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
  36. ^ Chow, Kat (November 17, 2016). "Renewed Support For Muslim Registry Called 'Abhorrent'". Code Switch. NPR. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  37. ^ a b Ford, Matt (November 19, 2015). "The Return of Korematsu". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  38. ^ a b c Feldman, Noah (November 18, 2016). "Why Korematsu Is Not a Precedent". The New York Times. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  39. ^ a b c Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. ___ (2018)
  40. ^ de Vogue, Ariane (June 26, 2018). "Supreme Court finally rejects infamous Korematsu decision on Japanese-American internment". CNN. Retrieved June 26, 2018.
  41. ^ "Table of Supreme Court Decisions Overruled by Subsequent Decisions". constitution.congress.gov. Retrieved July 9, 2022.
  42. ^ https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-827_i426.pdf[bare URL PDF]

Further reading

  • Biskupic, Joan (April 18, 2004). "Prisoners test legal limits of war on terror using Korematsu precedent". USA Today.
  • Levy, Robert A.; Mellor, William H. (2008). "Civil Liberties Versus National Security". The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom. New York: Sentinel. pp. 127–142. ISBN 978-1-59523-050-8.
  • Rountree, Clarke (2001). "Instantiating the law and its dissents in Korematsu v. United States: A dramatistic analysis of judicial discourse". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 87 (1): 1–24. doi:10.1080/00335630109384315. ISSN 0033-5630. S2CID 144116235.
  • Serrano, Susan Kiyomi; Minami, Dale (2003). "Korematsu v. United States: A 'Constant Caution' in a Time of Crisis". Asian Law Journal. 10: 37. ISSN 1078-439X.
  • Tushnet, Mark (2008). I dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases. Boston: Beacon Press. pp. 113–126. ISBN 978-0-8070-0036-6.

External links

  •   Works related to Korematsu v. United States at Wikisource
  • Text of Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) is available from: CourtListener  Findlaw  Google Scholar  Justia  Library of Congress 
  • Galloway, Russell W. Jr. (1989). "Basic Equal Protection Analysis". Santa Clara Law Review. 29 (1). Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  • Of Civil Wrongs and Rights, official site (2001 P.O.V. documentary on the 1983 coram nobis case)
  • "Supreme Court Landmark Case Korematsu v. United States" from C-SPAN's Landmark Cases: Historic Supreme Court Decisions
  • "Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis: Japanese American Internment and America Today" with Karen Korematsu and Kermit Roosevelt, from the National Constitution Center.
  • Japanese Relocation (1943 FILM- viewable for free at not-for profit- The Internet Archive)

korematsu, united, states, 1944, landmark, decision, supreme, court, united, states, uphold, exclusion, japanese, americans, from, west, coast, military, area, during, world, decision, been, widely, criticized, with, some, scholars, describing, odious, discred. Korematsu v United States 323 U S 214 1944 was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II The decision has been widely criticized 1 with some scholars describing it as an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry 2 and as a stain on American jurisprudence 3 The case is often cited as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time 4 5 6 Chief Justice John Roberts repudiated the Korematsu decision in his majority opinion in the 2018 case of Trump v Hawaii 7 8 Korematsu v United StatesSupreme Court of the United StatesArgued October 11 12 1944Decided December 18 1944Full case nameFred Korematsu vs United StatesCitations323 U S 214 more 65 S Ct 193 89 L Ed 194 1944 U S LEXIS 1341Case historyPriorCertiorari to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit 140 F 2d 289 9th Cir 1943 HoldingThe exclusionary order which caused the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was permissible Executive Order 9066 was constitutional Court membershipChief Justice Harlan F Stone Associate Justices Owen Roberts Hugo BlackStanley F Reed Felix FrankfurterWilliam O Douglas Frank MurphyRobert H Jackson Wiley B RutledgeCase opinionsMajorityBlack joined by Stone Reed Frankfurter Douglas RutledgeConcurrenceFrankfurterDissentRobertsDissentMurphyDissentJacksonLaws appliedExecutive Order 9066 U S Const amend VOverruled byTrump v Hawaii 2018 obiter dictum In the aftermath of Imperial Japan s attack on Pearl Harbor President Franklin D Roosevelt had issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19 1942 authorizing the U S War Department to create military areas from which any or all Americans might be excluded Subsequently the Western Defense Command a U S Army military command charged with coordinating the defense of the West Coast of the United States ordered all persons of Japanese ancestry including aliens and non aliens to relocate to internment camps However a 23 year old Japanese American man Fred Korematsu refused to leave the exclusion zone and instead challenged the order on the grounds that it violated the Fifth Amendment In a majority opinion joined by five other justices Associate Justice Hugo Black held that the need to protect against espionage by Japan outweighed the rights of Americans of Japanese ancestry Black wrote that Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race but rather because the properly constituted military authorities decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast during the war against Japan Dissenting justices Frank Murphy Robert H Jackson and Owen J Roberts all criticized the exclusion as racially discriminatory Murphy wrote that the exclusion of Japanese falls into the ugly abyss of racism and resembled the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy The Korematsu opinion was the first instance in which the Supreme Court applied the strict scrutiny standard of review to racial discrimination by the government it is one of only a handful of cases in which the Court held that the government met that standard Korematsu s conviction was voided by a California district court in 1983 on the grounds that Solicitor General Charles H Fahy had suppressed a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that held that there was no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as spies for Japan The Japanese Americans who were interned were later granted reparations through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 Contents 1 Background 2 Decision 2 1 Black s majority opinion 2 2 Frankfurter s concurrence 2 3 Murphy s dissent 2 4 Roberts s dissent 2 5 Jackson s dissent 3 Subsequent history 3 1 Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians 3 2 Conviction overturned 3 3 2011 DOJ admission of error 3 4 21st century reactions 3 5 Rejection in Trump v Hawaii 3 6 Rejection in dissent of United States v Zubaydah 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External linksBackground Edit Japanese American Assembly Center at Tanforan race track San Bruno In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the report of the First Roberts Commission President Franklin D Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19 1942 authorizing the War Department to create military areas from which any or all Americans might be excluded and to provide for the necessary transport lodging and feeding of persons displaced from such areas On March 2 1942 the U S Army Lieutenant General John L DeWitt commander of the Western Defense Command issued Public Proclamation No 1 demarcating western military areas and the exclusion zones therein and directing any Japanese German or Italian aliens and any person of Japanese ancestry to inform the U S Postal Service of any changes of residence 9 Further military areas and zones were demarcated in Public Proclamation No 2 In the meantime Secretary of War Henry L Stimson mailed to Senator Robert Rice Reynolds and House Speaker Sam Rayburn draft legislation authorizing the enforcement of Executive Order 9066 By March 21 Congress had enacted the proposed legislation which Roosevelt signed into law 10 On March 24 1942 Western Defense Command began issuing Civilian Exclusion orders commanding that all persons of Japanese ancestry including aliens and non aliens report to designated assembly points With the issuance of Civilian Restrictive Order No 1 on May 19 1942 Japanese Americans were forced to move into relocation camps 11 Meanwhile Fred Korematsu was a 23 year old Japanese American man who decided to stay at his residence in San Leandro California instead of obeying the order to relocate however he knowingly violated Civilian Exclusion Order No 34 of the U S Army even undergoing plastic surgery in an attempt to conceal his identity 12 Korematsu argued that Executive Order 9066 was unconstitutional and that it violated the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Fifth Amendment was selected over the Fourteenth Amendment due to the lack of federal protections in the Fourteenth Amendment He was arrested and convicted No question was raised as to Korematsu s loyalty to the United States The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit eventually affirmed his conviction 13 and the Supreme Court granted certiorari Decision EditBlack s majority opinion Edit Justice Hugo BlackThe decision of the case written by Justice Hugo Black found the case largely indistinguishable from the previous year s Hirabayashi v United States decision and rested largely on the same principle deference to Congress and the military authorities particularly in light of the uncertainty following Pearl Harbor Justice Black further denied that the case had anything to do with racial prejudice Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily and finally because Congress reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders as inevitably it must determined that they should have the power to do just this 14 In his diaries Justice Felix Frankfurter reported that Justice Black told the justices as reason for deferring to the executive branch Somebody must run this war It is either Roosevelt or us And we cannot 15 While Korematsu is regularly described as upholding the internment of Japanese Americans the majority opinion expressly declined to reach the issue of internment on the ground that Korematsu s conviction did not present that issue which it said raised different questions The Court cross referenced its decision the same day in Ex Parte Endo 323 U S 283 1944 in which the Court ruled that a loyal Japanese American must be released from detention 16 Frankfurter s concurrence Edit Justice Felix Frankfurter Justice Frankfurter s concurrence reads in its entirety According to my reading of Civilian Exclusion Order No 34 it was an offense for Korematsu to be found in Military Area No 1 the territory wherein he was previously living except within the bounds of the established Assembly Center of that area Even though the various orders issued by General DeWitt be deemed a comprehensive code of instructions their tenor is clear and not contradictory They put upon Korematsu the obligation to leave Military Area No 1 but only by the method prescribed in the instructions i e by reporting to the Assembly Center I am unable to see how the legal considerations that led to the decision in Hirabayashi v United States 320 U S 81 fail to sustain the military order which made the conduct now in controversy a crime And so I join in the opinion of the Court but should like to add a few words of my own The provisions of the Constitution which confer on the Congress and the President powers to enable this country to wage war are as much part of the Constitution as provisions looking to a nation at peace And we have had recent occasion to quote approvingly the statement of former Chief Justice Hughes that the war power of the Government is the power to wage war successfully Hirabayashi v United States supra at 93 and see Home Bldg amp L Assn v Blaisdell 290 U S 398 426 Therefore the validity of action under the war power must be judged wholly in the context of war That action is not to be stigmatized as lawless because like action in times of peace would be lawless To talk about a military order that expresses an allowable judgment of war needs by those entrusted with the duty of conducting war as an p 225 unconstitutional order is to suffuse a part of the Constitution with an atmosphere of unconstitutionality The respective spheres of action of military authorities and of judges are of course very different But within their sphere military authorities are no more outside the bounds of obedience to the Constitution than are judges within theirs The war power of the United States like its other powers is subject to applicable constitutional limitations Hamilton v Kentucky Distilleries Co 251 U S 146 156 To recognize that military orders are reasonably expedient military precautions in time of war and yet to deny them constitutional legitimacy makes of the Constitution an instrument for dialectic subtleties not reasonably to be attributed to the hard headed Framers of whom a majority had had actual participation in war If a military order such as that under review does not transcend the means appropriate for conducting war such action by the military is as constitutional as would be any authorized action by the Interstate Commerce Commission within the limits of the constitutional power to regulate commerce And being an exercise of the war power explicitly granted by the Constitution for safeguarding the national life by prosecuting war effectively I find nothing in the Constitution which denies to Congress the power to enforce such a valid military order by making its violation an offense triable in the civil courts Compare Interstate Commerce Commission v Brimson 154 U S 447 155 U S 3 and Monongahela Bridge Co v United States 216 U S 177 To find that the Constitution does not forbid the military measures now complained of does not carry with it approval of that which Congress and the Executive did That is their business not ours 14 Murphy s dissent Edit Justice Frank MurphyJustice Frank Murphy issued a vehement dissent saying that the exclusion of Japanese falls into the ugly abyss of racism and resembles the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy 14 Murphy argued that collective punishment for Japanese Americans was an unconstitutional response to any disloyalty that might have been found in a minority of their cohort He also compared the treatment of Japanese Americans with the treatment of Americans of German and Italian ancestry as evidence that race and not emergency alone led to the exclusion order which Korematsu was convicted of violating I dissent therefore from this legalization of racism Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life It is unattractive in any setting but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States They must accordingly be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution 14 Justice Murphy s two uses of the term racism in this opinion along with two additional uses in his concurrence in Steele v Louisville amp Nashville Railway Co decided the same day are among the first appearances of the word racism in a United States Supreme Court opinion The first appearance was in Justice Murphy s concurrence in Ex parte Endo 323 U S 283 1944 16 The term was also used in other cases such as Duncan v Kahanamoku 327 U S 304 1946 and Oyama v California 332 U S 633 1948 It then disappeared from the court s lexicon for 18 years it reappeared in Brown v Louisiana 383 U S 131 1966 It did not appear in Loving v Virginia 388 U S 1 1967 17 even though that case did talk about racial discrimination and interracial marriages Justice Murphy s dissent is considered the strongest of the three dissenting opinions and since the 1980s has been cited as part of modern jurisprudence s categorical rejection of the majority opinion 18 Roberts s dissent Edit Justice Owen Roberts Justice Roberts s dissent also acknowledges the racism inherent in the case although he does not use the word He recognized that the defendant was being punished based solely upon his ancestry This is not a case of keeping people off the streets at night as was Hirabayashi v United States 320 U S 81 p 226 nor a case of temporary exclusion of a citizen from an area for his own safety or that of the community nor a case of offering him an opportunity to go temporarily out of an area where his presence might cause danger to himself or to his fellows On the contrary it is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp based on his ancestry and solely because of his ancestry without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States If this be a correct statement of the facts disclosed by this record and facts of which we take judicial notice I need hardly labor the conclusion that Constitutional rights have been violated 14 Jackson s dissent Edit Justice Robert Jackson By contrast Justice Robert Jackson s dissent argued that defense measures will not and often should not be held within the limits that bind civil authority in peace and that it would perhaps be unreasonable to hold the military who issued the exclusion order to the same standards of constitutionality that apply to the rest of the government In the very nature of things he wrote military decisions are not susceptible of intelligent judicial appraisal He acknowledged the Court s powerlessness in that regard writing that courts can never have any real alternative to accepting the mere declaration of the authority that issued the order that it was reasonably necessary from a military viewpoint 14 He nonetheless dissented writing that even if the courts should not be put in the position of second guessing or interfering with the orders of military commanders that does not mean that they should have to ratify or enforce those orders if they are unconstitutional Jackson writes I do not think the civil courts may be asked to execute a military expedient that has no place in law under the Constitution I would reverse the judgment and discharge the prisoner 19 Indeed he warns that the precedent of Korematsu might last well beyond the war and the internment A military order however unconstitutional is not apt to last longer than the military emergency Even during that period a succeeding commander may revoke it all But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes 14 Jackson further warned Of course the existence of a military power resting on force so vagrant so centralized so necessarily heedless of the individual is an inherent threat to liberty But I would not lead people to rely on this Court for a review that seems to me wholly delusive The military reasonableness of these orders can only be determined by military superiors If the people ever let command of the war power fall into irresponsible and unscrupulous hands the courts wield no power equal to its restraint The chief restraint upon those who command the physical forces of the country in the future as in the past must be their responsibility to the political judgments of their contemporaries and to the moral judgments of history 14 Jackson acknowledged the racial issues at hand writing Korematsu was born on our soil of parents born in Japan The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity and a citizen of California by residence No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here he is not law abiding and well disposed Korematsu however has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen near the place where he was born and where all his life he has lived H is crime would result not from anything he did said or thought different than they but only in that he was born of different racial stock Now if any fundamental assumption underlies our system it is that guilt is personal and not inheritable Even if all of one s antecedents had been convicted of treason the Constitution forbids its penalties to be visited upon him But here is an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign If Congress in peace time legislation should enact such a criminal law I should suppose this Court would refuse to enforce it 14 Subsequent history EditCongressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Edit In 1980 Congress established a commission to evaluate the events leading up to the issuance of Executive Order 9066 and accompanying military directives and their impact on citizens and resident aliens charging the commission with recommending remedies Discussing the Korematsu decision in their 1982 report entitled Personal Justice Denied this Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians CCWRIC concluded that each part of the decision questions of both factual review and legal principles has been discredited or abandoned and that Today the decision in Korematsu lies overruled in the court of history 20 21 Conviction overturned Edit Korematsu challenged his conviction in 1983 by filing before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California a writ of coram nobis which asserted that the original conviction was so flawed as to represent a grave injustice that should be reversed As evidence he submitted the conclusions of the CCWRIC report as well as newly discovered internal Justice Department communications demonstrating that evidence contradicting the military necessity for the Executive Order 9066 had been knowingly withheld from the Supreme Court Specifically he said Solicitor General Charles H Fahy had kept from the Court a wartime finding by the Office of Naval Intelligence the Ringle Report that concluded very few Japanese represented a risk and that almost all of those who did were already in custody when the Executive Order was enacted 22 While not admitting error the government submitted a counter motion asking the court to vacate the conviction without a finding of fact on its merits Judge Marilyn Hall Patel denied the government s petition and concluded that the Supreme Court had indeed been given a selective record representing a compelling circumstance sufficient to overturn the original conviction She granted the writ thereby voiding Korematsu s conviction while pointing out that since this decision was based on prosecutorial misconduct and not an error of law any legal precedent established by the case remained in force 23 24 2011 DOJ admission of error Edit On May 20 2011 Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal released an unusual statement denouncing one of his predecessors Solicitor General Charles H Fahy 22 He faulted Fahy for having suppressed critical evidence in the Hirabayashi and Korematsu cases before the Supreme Court during World War II specifically the Ringle Report s conclusion that there was no indication Japanese Americans were acting as spies or sending signals to enemy submarines The rulings in the 1980s that overturned the convictions of Korematsu and Hirabayashi concluded that failure to disclose the Ringle Report along with an initial report by General De Witt that demonstrated racist motivations behind the military orders represented a fatal flaw in the prosecution of their cases before the Supreme Court Katyal noted that Justice Department attorneys had actually alerted Fahy that failing to disclose the Ringle Report s existence in the briefs or argument in the Supreme Court might approximate the suppression of evidence Thus Katyal concluded that Fahy did not inform the Court that a key set of allegations used to justify the internment had been doubted if not fully discredited within the government s own agencies Katyal therefore announced his office s filing of a formal admission of error He reaffirmed the extraordinary duty of the Solicitor General to address the Court with absolute candor due to the special credence the Court explicitly grants to his court submissions 25 21st century reactions Edit Fred Korematsu Eleven lawyers who had represented Fred Korematsu Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui in successful efforts in lower federal courts to nullify their convictions for violating military curfew and exclusion orders sent a letter dated January 13 2014 26 to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr In light of the appeal proceedings before the U S Supreme Court in Hedges v Obama the lawyers asked Verrilli to ask the Supreme Court to overrule its decisions in Korematsu Hirabayashi 1943 and Yasui 1943 If the Solicitor General shouldn t do this they asked that the United States government to make clear that the federal government does not consider the internment decisions as valid precedent for governmental or military detention of individuals or groups without due process of law 27 On February 3 2014 Justice Antonin Scalia during a discussion with law students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa William S Richardson School of Law said that the Supreme Court s Korematsu decision upholding the internment of Japanese Americans was wrong but it could happen again in war time 28 In October 2015 at Santa Clara University Scalia told law students that Justice Jackson s dissenting opinion in Korematsu was the past court opinion he admired most adding It was nice to know that at least somebody on the court realized that that was wrong 29 Donald Trump s Presidential election led Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to advocate for Trump to implement immigration controls like the National Security Entry Exit Registration System 30 31 One Trump supporter Carl Higbie said that Jimmy Carter s 1980 restriction on Iranian immigration as well as the Korematsu decision gives legal precedent for a registry of immigrants 32 Critics of Higbie 33 argued that Korematsu should not be referenced as precedent 34 35 36 Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein argued that the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 granting reparations to the Japanese Americans who were interned amounts to Korematsu having been overturned by history 2 outside of a potential formal Supreme Court overrule 37 Another critic of Higbie described Korematsu as a stain on American jurisprudence 3 According to Harvard University s Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Noah Feldman a decision can be wrong at the very moment it was decided and therefore should not be followed subsequently 38 Justice Anthony Kennedy applied this approach in Lawrence v Texas to overturn Bowers v Hardwick and thereby strike down anti sodomy laws in 14 states The implication is that decisions which are wrong when decided should not be followed even before the Court reverses itself and Korematsu has probably the greatest claim to being wrong when decided of any case which still stood 38 Legal scholar Richard Primus applied the term Anti Canon to cases which are universally assailed as wrong immoral and unconstitutional 37 and have become exemplars of faulty legal reasoning 1 Plessy v Ferguson is one such example and Korematsu has joined this group as Feldman then put it Korematsu s uniquely bad legal status means it s not precedent even though it hasn t been overturned 38 Rejection in Trump v Hawaii Edit Chief Justice Roberts in writing the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in Trump v Hawaii stated that Korematsu v United States was wrongly decided essentially disavowing the decision and indicating that a majority of the court no longer finds Korematsu persuasive 39 38 better source needed Quoting Justice Robert H Jackson s dissent from Korematsu the Chief Justice stated The dissent s reference to Korematsu however affords this Court the opportunity to make express what is already obvious Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided has been overruled in the court of history and to be clear has no place in law under the Constitution Trump v Hawaii slip op at 38 quoting 323 U S at 248 Jackson J dissenting 39 38 Roberts also added The forcible relocation of U S citizens to concentration camps solely and explicitly on the basis of race is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority 39 38 40 21 Congress regards Korematsu as having been overruled by Trump v Hawaii 41 Rejection in dissent of United States v Zubaydah Edit Justice Gorsuch writing in his dissent of United States v Zubaydah reiterated the fact that Korematsu was negligent Gorsuch criticised the court for allowing state interest as a justification for suppressing judicial proceedings in the name of national security He used Korematsu as a justification against doing such Justice Gorsuch dissented stating In Korematsu v United States the President persuaded this Court to permit the forced internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II The President did so in part by relying on a military report that insisted immediate action was imperative to national security The report however contained information executive officials knew to be false at the time And still more years passed before this Court formally repudiated its decision Internal citations omitted Justice Neil Gorsuch United States v Zubaydah 595 U S Gorsuch J dissenting 42 See also EditAnticanon Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Ex parte Endo Hirabayashi v United States Fred Korematsu Day Fred T Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education Japanese American redress and court cases Mochizuki v United States Trail of tears Yasui v United StatesReferences Edit a b Primus Richard A 1998 Canon Anti Canon and Judicial Dissent Duke Law Journal 48 2 243 303 doi 10 2307 1373107 JSTOR 1373107 a b Fein Bruce November 25 2016 History Overrules Odious Supreme Court Precedent Huffington Post Retrieved November 27 2016 a b Takei Carl November 27 2016 The incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II does not provide a legal cover for a Muslim registry Los Angeles Times Retrieved November 27 2016 Matheson Scott M 2009 Presidential Constitutionalism in Perilous Times Cambridge Mass Harvard University Press p 70 ISBN 978 0 674 03161 6 OCLC 226213461 Schwartz Bernard 1997 A Book of Legal Lists The Best and Worst in American Law with 100 Court and Judge Trivia Questions New York Oxford University Press p 69 ISBN 978 0 19 802694 5 OCLC 435911877 Savage David G January 2009 How Did They Get It So Wrong Left and right differ on the decisions but each side has its worst list ABA Journal 95 1 20 21 ISSN 0747 0088 JSTOR 27846961 Trump v Hawaii and Chief Justice Roberts s Korematsu Overruled Parlor Trick ACS American Constitution Society June 29 2018 Retrieved July 14 2019 culture New to The New Criterion Subscribe to the premier journal of Price Now at Its Lowest Facially neutral racially biased by Wen Fa amp John Yoo The New Criterion Retrieved September 26 2022 Qtd in A Brief History of Japanese American Relocation During World War II National Park Service Burton J et al 2002 Confinement and Ethnicity An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites Seattle University of Washington Press ISBN 0295981563 Qtd in A Brief History of Japanese American Relocation During World War II National Park Service tenBroek Jacobus 1953 Wartime Power of the Military over Citizen Civilians within the Country California Law Review 41 2 167 208 doi 10 2307 3478076 JSTOR 3478076 Hata Donald Hata Nadine 1995 Japanese Americans and World War II Exclusion Internment and Redress Wheeling IL Harlan Davidson p 18 ISBN 9780882959092 Korematsu v United States 140 F 2d 289 9th Cir 1943 a b c d e f g h i Korematsu v United States 323 U S 214 Supreme Court of the United States 1944 Stephen Breyer America s Courts Can t Ignore the World In The Atlantic September 2018 a b Ex parte Mitsuye Endo 323 U S 283 Supreme Court of the United States 1944 Lopez Ian F Haney 2007 A nation of minorities race ethnicity and reactionary colorblindness PDF Stanford Law Review 59 4 985 1064 permanent dead link Anita S Krishnakumar On the Evolution of the Canonical DISSENT Rutgers Law Review 52 no 3 Spring 2000 781 826 Barrett John 2005 A Commander s Power a Civilian s Reason Justice Jackson s Korematsu Dissent Law and Contemporary Problems 68 2 63 JSTOR 27592094 Personal Justice Denied Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians December 1982 pp 1 238 239 a b Savage Charlie June 26 2018 Korematsu Notorious Supreme Court Ruling on Japanese Internment Is Finally Tossed Out The New York Times Retrieved June 26 2018 a b Savage David G May 24 2011 U S official cites misconduct in Japanese American internment cases Los Angeles Times Robinson Greg 2001 By Order of the President FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans Cambridge MA Harvard University Press p 113 ISBN 9780674006393 Court Reverses Korematsu Conviction Korematsu v U S 584 F Supp 1406 16 Fed R Evid Serv 1231 N D Cal Apr 19 1984 LSU Law Center Retrieved June 28 2018 Tracy Russo May 20 2011 Confession of Error The Solicitor General s Mistakes During the Japanese American Internment Cases Retrieved April 7 2013 Minami Dale Bannai Lorraine Tomaki Donald Irons Peter Yamamoto Eric Miyasato Leigh Ann Nagae Pegy Kawakami Rod Kai Karen Bannai Kathryn A Rusky Robert January 13 2014 Re Hedges v Obama Supreme Court of the United States Docket No 17 758 PDF Retrieved April 29 2014 via SCOUSblog Denniston Lyle January 16 2014 A plea to cast aside Korematsu SCOTUSblog Retrieved April 29 2014 Weiss Debra Cassens February 4 2014 Scalia Korematsu was wrong but you are kidding yourself if you think it won t happen again American Bar Association Retrieved February 7 2014 Egelko Bob October 30 2015 Scalia s favorite opinion You might be surprised Politics Blog San Francisco Chronicle Retrieved November 25 2015 Caldwell Alicia A November 21 2016 Trump supporter pitches hard line immigration plan for Homeland Security PBS NewsHour PBS Retrieved November 27 2016 Raymond Adam K November 21 2016 Trump Cabinet Hopeful Kris Kobach Forgets Cover Sheet Exposes DHS Plan for All to See New York Retrieved November 27 2016 Kopan Tal Kurtz Jason Trump backer further explains internment comments CNN Retrieved June 26 2018 Abadi Mark November 17 2016 Megyn Kelly shut down a Trump supporter who said Japanese internment camps were precedent for a Muslim registry Business Insider Australia Retrieved November 27 2016 Hawkins Derek November 17 2016 Japanese American internment is precedent for national Muslim registry prominent Trump backer says The Washington Post Retrieved November 18 2016 Bromwich Jonah Engel November 17 2016 Trump Camp s Talk of Registry and Japanese Internment Raises Muslim Fears The New York Times Retrieved November 18 2016 Chow Kat November 17 2016 Renewed Support For Muslim Registry Called Abhorrent Code Switch NPR Retrieved November 27 2016 a b Ford Matt November 19 2015 The Return of Korematsu The Atlantic Retrieved November 27 2016 a b c Feldman Noah November 18 2016 Why Korematsu Is Not a Precedent The New York Times Retrieved November 27 2016 a b c Trump v Hawaii 585 U S 2018 de Vogue Ariane June 26 2018 Supreme Court finally rejects infamous Korematsu decision on Japanese American internment CNN Retrieved June 26 2018 Table of Supreme Court Decisions Overruled by Subsequent Decisions constitution congress gov Retrieved July 9 2022 https www supremecourt gov opinions 21pdf 20 827 i426 pdf bare URL PDF Further reading EditBiskupic Joan April 18 2004 Prisoners test legal limits of war on terror using Korematsu precedent USA Today Levy Robert A Mellor William H 2008 Civil Liberties Versus National Security The Dirty Dozen How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom New York Sentinel pp 127 142 ISBN 978 1 59523 050 8 Rountree Clarke 2001 Instantiating the law and its dissents in Korematsu v United States A dramatistic analysis of judicial discourse Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 1 1 24 doi 10 1080 00335630109384315 ISSN 0033 5630 S2CID 144116235 Serrano Susan Kiyomi Minami Dale 2003 Korematsu v United States A Constant Caution in a Time of Crisis Asian Law Journal 10 37 ISSN 1078 439X Tushnet Mark 2008 I dissent Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases Boston Beacon Press pp 113 126 ISBN 978 0 8070 0036 6 External links Edit Works related to Korematsu v United States at Wikisource Text of Korematsu v United States 323 U S 214 1944 is available from CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress Galloway Russell W Jr 1989 Basic Equal Protection Analysis Santa Clara Law Review 29 1 Retrieved February 8 2021 Of Civil Wrongs and Rights official site 2001 P O V documentary on the 1983 coram nobis case A documentary on Korematsu v United States Supreme Court Landmark Case Korematsu v United States from C SPAN s Landmark Cases Historic Supreme Court Decisions Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis Japanese American Internment and America Today with Karen Korematsu and Kermit Roosevelt from the National Constitution Center Japanese Relocation 1943 FILM viewable for free at not for profit The Internet Archive Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Korematsu v United States amp oldid 1144870709, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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