Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Scalia: Internment Camp Ruling Could Happen Again

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told law students at the University of Hawaii on Monday that the nation's highest court was wrong to uphold the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, but he wouldn't be surprised if the court issued a similar ruling during a future conflict, reports Talking Points Memo.

TPM continues:
Scalia was responding to a question about the court's 1944 decision in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the convictions of Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu for violating an order to report to an internment camp.

"Well of course Korematsu was wrong. And I think we have repudiated in a later case. But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again," Scalia told students and faculty during a lunchtime Q-and-A session.

Scalia cited a Latin expression meaning, "In times of war, the laws fall silent."

"That's what was going on — the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot. That's what happens. It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It's no justification, but it is the reality," he said.

4 comments:

  1. Cos Scalia would rubberstamp his republican buddies doing exactly that.

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  2. ...and his democrat buddies too.

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  3. With Japanese internment, I recall their was a real estate scam being pulled that involved future Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren who was the one leading enforcement in California. Maybe Scalia was alluding to that?

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  4. So even the nine supposedly most learned and logical legal minds, the ones we trust to pass reasoned judgment on our most important questions, are just petty, vengeful, political hacks incapable of divorcing themselves from their own self interested biases and desires.

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