Legal Brief- Korematsu

1 Pages 271 Words

1. Korematsu v. United States, (1944); pg. 638, briefed 1/23/96

2. Facts: Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the president issued an order allowing the military commanders to exclude persons of Japanese ancestry from areas identified as military areas.

3. Procedural Posture: Korematsu was convicted of violating the exclusionary laws.

4. Issue: Whether classification and exclusion based on Japanese ancestry during the WWII was a violation of equal protection.

5. Holding: No.

6. Majority Reasoning: All legal restrictions that curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect, triggering the “most rigid scrutiny.” There must be a “pressing public necessity” for the classification. Here, it was impossible to segregate out the loyal from the disloyal persons, so exclusion of the whole class was justified due to the public dangers involved. The Congress has given the power to the military to make these military based decisions. They are not based on racism.

7. Dissent Reasoning: [Murphy] Contended the the racial classification was not even rationally related to the end of protecting from invasion because it was over inclusive. It is an unreasonable assumption that all persons of Japanese ancestry have the capacity to engage in espionage. The Army had the more effective alternative, which would accord with due process, to hold individual loyalty hearings to determine who was a risk. [Jackson] felt that the decision was even more onerous. A military commander may breach the constitution temporarily every now and then, but for the Supreme Court to rationalize it is to make racism part of the Constitutional doctrine, ready to be used in the future by anyone who can show military expediency....