CALL OF SHAME
KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES 323 U.S. 214 (1944) EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY
As Cicero famously warned, inter arma enim silent leges—“Laws are muted in times of war.” This axiom often has been invoked—by Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer, among others—to explain, if not to excuse, a 1944 Supreme Court decision approving forced relocation from the West Coast and internment in the American interior of some 120,000 Japanese-Americans, about 80,000 of them American citizens.
The ruling is ranked widely among the most shameful decisions in the court’s history. In 1988, Congress passed a resolution of apology for confining Japanese-Americans, and the government followed up by paying $1.6 billion in
