Korematsu V. US Supreme Court Case Study

Korematsu V. United States was a court case during the time of World War II. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, people of Japanese descent were considered threats. As a result, Franklin Roosevelt issued the Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. This Order demanded that each and every person of Japanese descent be moved to internment camps, regardless of citizenship. Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American citizen, refused to leave his home to go to the internment camp. Therefore, he was convicted of disobeying the law. This landmark court case was deemed unconstitutional due to the violation of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment:
”All persons born or naturalized in the United States… are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” (Amendment XIV, Section 1) It was also a violation of the Fifth Amendment which states that “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” which was exactly what happened to the Japanese American.
Korematsu appealed his conviction and when the case was brought to the Supreme Court in 1944, the court sided with the government in a 6-3 decision to keep his conviction because the government was allowed to deny Japanese people their constitutional rights for military purposes.
As Justice Frank Murphy stated, “Such exclusion goes over "the very brink of constitutional power," and falls into the ugly abyss of racism.” In Justice Robert Jackson’s dissent, he said, “The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity, and a citizen of California by residence” defending Korematsu’s rights. This decision favors federal
powers.
Justice Hugo Black wrote the decision for the case. First off, he begins by agreeing that forcing a large group of citizens to camps is inconsistent with the Constitution that the founding fathers laid down. However, he starts to change his argument by saying that because it was during the time of World War II, the United States’ shores were threatened and Japanese people were being suspected of being spies, “the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.” Black was basically saying that protecting the United States from the possibility of there being Japanese spies was more important than Fred Korematsu’s basic constitutional rights. However, three Justices wrote dissents claiming that the Order was committing racial discrimination rather than being just a military order.
According to a writ of habeas corpus, someone unlawfully detained should be able to seek relief. That was not the case with Korematsu, however, as he was denied this ability although his conviction was overturned after it had been discovered that the United States Government had submitted false information. But to this day, the ruling of Korematsu v. United States still stands and has not been overturned. That means that the government could still force people of a certain category to internment camps for the safety of the country. This is similar to what is happening with the United States and the Syrian refugees today, at this very moment. People were skeptical about welcoming them because just a couple of days before was the terrorist attack in Paris which took 130 lives and injured hundreds more, so people are worried that some of the refugees might be terrorists. So if something endangering the country happens and it just so happens to involve one of those 3 million refugees, the government still has the power to force them into relocation centers and camps. All in all, because this case was not overturned, people could still be moved to camps based on their race and if they’re a threat to the country.