Korematsu v. United States

Korematsu v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 11–12, 1944
Decided December 18, 1944
Full case nameFred Korematsu v. 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)

Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that upheld the internment 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]

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 this 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 which stated 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.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference anti-canon was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Fein was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference CTakei was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  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. ^ Fa, Wen; Yoo, John (September 21, 2022). "Facially neutral, racially biased". The New Criterion. Retrieved September 26, 2022.