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	Korematsu v. United States (1944)


		The Supreme Court recognized that a law that discriminates against a certain nationality of people should be subject to the strictest scrutiny, and emphasized that "pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can." However, the Court ultimately upheld Korematsu's conviction, explaining that the order was essential, given the state of national emergency and the urgent need to secure the homeland, and that the Court was obligated to trust the judgment of the other branches of the government. Although his opinion clearly did not prevail in the Supreme Court, Justice Murphy filed an emphatic dissent: "Such exclusion [of the Japanese people] goes over 'the very brink of constitutional power' and falls into the ugly abyss of racism…. I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism."



		In the Japanese American internment camps, American citizens who had committed no crimes were locked behind barbed wire and crowded into ramshackle wooden barracks, where they lived one family to a room. Nearly 18,000 Japanese American men won release from those camps to fight for the United States Army, fighting heroically even though their families were imprisoned by the government. On December 18, 1944, in the Endo case, the Supreme Court ruled that a civilian agency, the War Relocation Authority, had no right to incarcerate law-abiding citizens. Two weeks later the federal government began closing down the camps, ending one of the most shameful chapters in American history. This history is important to remember when the government invokes natural security to defend measures that might bear stricter scrutiny in a more peaceful time. For a full summary of this case, go to: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl? court=US&vol=323&invol=214