# Korematsu v. United States (December 18, 1944) On **December 18, 1944**, the Supreme Court ruled **6–3** in *Korematsu v. United States* that the wartime internment of approximately **120,000 people of Japanese descent** — two-thirds of whom were American citizens — was constitutional under the government's war powers. Justice Hugo Black's majority opinion held that the military necessity of preventing espionage and sabotage on [[the West]] Coast outweighed the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans, and that the internment was justified not by racial prejudice but by "pressing public necessity." Justice Frank Murphy's dissent called the decision the "legalization of racism" and argued that the internment was based on racial assumptions rather than military evidence. Justice Robert Jackson's dissent warned that the Court had created a precedent that would "lie about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need." ## The Internment Following Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), President Roosevelt issued **[[Executive Order 9066]]** (February 19, 1942), authorizing the military to designate "military areas" from which any persons could be excluded. Under this authority, the military ordered the forced removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry — citizens and noncitizens alike — from the West Coast. They were transported to ten concentration camps (officially "relocation centers") in remote areas of California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Arkansas. Families lost their homes, businesses, and property. Internment lasted until 1945. No comparable mass internment was imposed on German Americans or Italian Americans, despite the United States being simultaneously at war with Germany and Italy. The racial specificity of the order — applied exclusively to people of Japanese descent — was the factual basis for the dissents' charge of racial discrimination. ## The Long Aftermath **1983:** The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded that the internment was not justified by military necessity but was the result of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." **1988:** [[President Reagan]] signed the Civil Liberties Act, formally apologizing for the internment and authorizing $20,000 in reparations to each surviving internee. **2011:** The Acting Solicitor General issued a formal confession of error, acknowledging that the original Solicitor General's office had suppressed evidence undermining the government's military-necessity claims. **2018:** In *[[Trump v. Hawaii]]* (the travel ban case), [[Chief Justice Roberts]] wrote in dicta that *Korematsu* "was gravely wrong the day it was decided" and had been "overruled in the court of history." However, [[Justice Sotomayor]]'s dissent noted the uncomfortable parallel: the majority was formally repudiating *Korematsu* while simultaneously upholding a presidential order that targeted a specific ethnic/religious group (Muslims) based on security claims — the same structural logic *Korematsu* had endorsed. *Korematsu* has never been formally overruled by a holding. Roberts's 2018 statement was dicta — legally non-binding language in a case about a different issue. The precedent — that wartime executive power can override the constitutional rights of a racially defined group — technically remains available. ## KB Significance 1. **The racial-security through-line.** *Korematsu* established the precedent that national security claims can justify the mass deprivation of constitutional rights along racial lines. This through-line runs from Japanese internment through the post-9/11 surveillance state ([[USA PATRIOT Act]], NSA bulk collection, terror watchlists that disproportionately targeted Muslim Americans) through the Trump-era travel ban through the 2025 immigration enforcement operations that target Latino communities. The structure recurs: a racial or ethnic group is designated as a security threat; executive power is deployed against the group; the courts defer to the executive's security judgment. 2. **Jackson's "loaded weapon."** [[Justice Jackson]]'s warning that the *Korematsu* precedent would "lie about like a loaded weapon" is the KB's most cited judicial metaphor for constitutional danger. Every expansion of executive power documented in this KB — the [[Insurrection Act]], domestic military deployments, [[Schedule F]] loyalty purges — is an instance of an authority picking up a weapon that a previous generation left loaded. 3. **The Taney pattern (wartime variant).** Like *Dred Scott* (racial hierarchy), *Plessy* (racial segregation), and *Shelby County* (voting suppression), *Korematsu* used constitutional interpretation to validate the subordination of a racial group — in this case, under the rubric of wartime necessity rather than property rights or separate-but-equal. ## See Also - [[Dred Scott v. Sandford]] — The racial-hierarchy precedent *Korematsu* extends into the wartime context - [[Insurrection Act]] — The domestic deployment authority that shares *Korematsu*'s executive-power logic - [[Shelby County v. Holder]] — The next link in the Taney pattern chain - [[Supreme Court Rulings Hub]] — The MOC for all SCOTUS cases in the KB