Also privacy (c.f. Griswald). Plus, it's just frightening for the state to be making this decision, in either direction.
Note that a guardian has a fiduciary duty to protect a ward. That cuts both ways, of course.
Should financial considerations weigh in this? How much money would Storar's death have to save in order to justify lettin him die? 80% of the elderly have a serious illness, and a serious percentage of the the money spent on healthcare is spent on that last part of life. Nursing homes (mostly; like 95%) are on the verge of bankruptcy. And the number of old people is going to grow dramatically. And 94% of the nursing homes are failing federal standards.
So this hearkens back to Ft. Worth School, and the notion of spending requirements.
There's the notion of reducing suffering, of course. Also, how much life are we talking about taking away, here, (in terms of both quality and quantity)?
Given the difficulties of all these policies, and their complexity, even though it's maybe technically an offence to stop the transfusing, most prosecutors aren't going to prosecute for this. And if there is prosecution, the prosecutor's motives will be questioned (is it political? are there racial or religious overtones?). When there's widespread doubt about the actual criminality of an act, a lot of prosecutors will pass it by.
And on the opposing side, there's a right to life defined in the constitution: that trumps all the other rights.
This violates a lot of different religious policies (c.f. Atkins). Also, it's a slippery slope to eugenics, even. These are irreversible decisions, and people might change their minds.
If you make this a legitimate choice (i.e., allow doctors to talk about it with patients), patients might feel pressured to take this course, or be suggestible.
And note that the result in this case would be different if Storar were not retarded: we're nervous (and disabled people are nervous in particular) about who gets to make this choice.
And the minute insurance companies find out there's a cheaper course of action, they'll put the squeeze on.
Mentioning cost is upsetting, and crass. It may be relevant, but we need not to mention it. This is like the American Trucking case, or the Pinto case-- finding what a life is worth.
The abortion rulings were the court's big power play for a while. They don't have the power to make another strong and controversial moral stance: they're bound to grant the application for petition to continue the transfusions.
So "should he live or die" is a great discussion, but who should say? Options:
1997: is there a liberty right to die? Cruzan was about witholding life support, but can you affirmatively assist someone to die? WA v. Glucksberg: 9-0 decision-- no, there is no liberty right to die, and a state may criminalize assisted suicide.
Vacco v. Quinn: it does not violate equal protection for a state to say that you can pull the plug but not actively intervene.
And of course, Schiavo.
It's an important case, and one interesting aspect of it is that the court is on the one hand somewhat admiring of Indians, but also paternalistic. In spite of all the flattery, they're not allowed to own land (this is not unlike the protection of women that we see in some cases). So, in the end, not equality, at least in 1823.
Also, the court here is holding that because of the constitution, and the unequal status of blacks, it was unconstitutional for congress to pass the MO Compromise (newly admitted states can't have slavery). This led to the breakdown of any attempt at compromise on the issue of slavery, and led to the civil war. This is farther than judicial review should go-- the court did tremendous damage to the country (500K dead).
5/9 of the court were southern (justices were still riding circuit, and the states down there were big).
1883 cases: petty apartheid (segregated businesses, etc.). SCOTUS: 14A only applies to state discrimination, not private acts. So equal rights more or less rendered nugatory: this isn't a badge of slavery, as long as the discrimination is being done by private people.
Korematsu was of Japanese ancestry, but is a US citizen-- about 40% of the people interned were US residents, but not citizens. Korematsu, however, was a citizen. He violates the executive order, which had several parts:
None of the setbacks for the Axis had yet occurred. Midway wasn't until June. Stalingrad wasn't until the next winter.
In retrospect, neither Japan nor Germany could conquer the US, but at that time people were pretty nervous. Why does that mean we should move Japanese out of coastal CA? The first main worry was espionage. Out of 110K Japanese Americans, there were some (hard to say how many) who were disloyal. And there's the inference that racial, cultural, and national identity might sway more. Anyway, about 5K Japanese Americans declined to take a loyalty oath (not that this shows much-- there are lots of reasons not to take such an oath, it's kind of contrary to 1A), and a couple thousand asked (and were refused) to be relocated to Japan at the start of the war.
This guy, by the way is Fred Korematsu. Fred.
Anyway, there was nervousness about 5th columns, because the Germans had used this so successfully in Spain and in Czechoslovakia (where the Sudeten Germans helped prepare for the invasion). So whether or not this was a realistic fear, it was nevertheless a fear.
And the second big worry is espionage-- the military intercepted Japanese signals to Japanese navy ships from SF, e.g.
So Endo wins, but Korematsu stands for the constitutionality of the exclusionary order.
Note that HI (not a state yet) didn't get as fired up as CA about dealing with the Japanese. And oddly Earl Warren (either Gov or Lt Gov at that time) was leading that charge. And the executive orders were signed by FDR, which is also a little ironic, in retrospect. FDR historians argue that he was pressured to sign it (some say by the military, but the military didn't much care about this), perhaps by CA civillians, but nevertheless it was his call to sign it or not. And FDR had written (an early newspaper article in the South) that it would be a bad idea for European and Asian races to intermarry-- he later repudiated this, of course.
So Korematsu is a national embarrassment.
Footnote: John Paul Stevens did the decoding of the messages that doomed Yamamoto. CF his position in Hendricks and Boumediene-- it's easier to deal with a concrete person than an abstraction (i.e., hypothetical future victims). Also, JPS's father (a big hotel owner who lost a lot in the depression) was convicted of fraud of some sort in relation to the dire economic straits. The IL appellate system threw out the conviction for want of evidence. Stevens is also a big champion of criminal procedure, perhaps because he's concerned about people being wronfully convicted. So maybe some of the issues that shape a justice's decisions have nothing at all to do with the cases before them.
The War Power is a strong one, and this is probably the strongest example of it. When you're in a war, you need to win it, or you might as well throw away all your other powers.
Note that 14A says "no state," and the equal protection and liberty problems here are federally sourced. And in those days courts said that this didn't apply to the US. Korematsu doesn't reject application of 14A's equal protection to the federal government (a position that will be ratified in Brown v. Topeka, and there's no doubt that the US gov is bound by 14A as well), it just says that protection against this kind of discrimination is trumped by the necessities of the war.
So 14A covers race, but the obvious intent was to deal with African Americans. The language is neutral, but this is obviously the intent of it-- cf. the Butchers case: whites are not covered under 14A. Later that expanded to cover Chinese Americans. In the 1940's though, Japanese Americans were not particularly economically downtrodden-- they had been doing rather well. So do they need special "equal protection" protection?
The dissent says not only are the covered, but they should win. The majority says they ARE covered, but they lose anyway because of the war. So Korematsy actually expands the coverage of equal protection, in spite of its result. And nowadays we consider it obvious that all races are covered by 14A. And much of the language of equal rights protection comes out of Korematsu as well (pressing public necessity, compelling state interest, etc.). Amazingly, the case turns out to be a significant development for equal protection law.
In war, maybe you do need to take some risks: if you destroy your values in order to win, it's kind of a pyrrhic victory. So the holding that "war power trumps everything at the beginning of WWII" may be obsolete. And note that this case isn't heard until 1944; it was clear who was going to win at that point.
Note that CA wanted this, congress wanted this, the executive wanted this-- what business does the court have upsetting it? So separation of powers supports the court's holding.
Of course, this is a big abuse of property rights. WWII was a major expansion in violations of the takings clause: factories taken over for production of war materiel. And forcing someone out of their house (and subsequently selling it at a disadvantageous price) is a violation.
Consistency also: how come we let Mrs. Endo out, but Korematsu can't go home? So we want certainty in the law, but the distinction between these two things is pretty fine.
This case is upsetting to all minorities (and even citizens of other countries): the court tolerates serious discrimination here.
Strict scrutiny, compelling state interest, etc. These were all coined here. "Narrowly tailored" gets added later (in Endo)-- we couldn't have it here, because it would have sunk the case: this was not narrowly tailored.
Also some due process concerns: this was just wholesale application of the policy.
And note that Japanese American units in the US army were the most decorated units in the whole war-- so as a practical point, you might not want to incarcerate so many potentially excellent soldiers when you've got a big war to prosecute.
All detainees were released in about 1946; the executive order wasn't revoked until the 1970s (President Ford). But the president can't revoke a statute (and congress had ratified it, after all).
1983, Korematsu re-opens the case saying the US witheld information to the effect that Japan wasn't going to invade, and that meant the evidence was stilted-- the prosecution essentially witheld evidence that would be exculpatory to the defendant. Judge Patel (Fed Dist Ct in SF area) concurs, and overturns the conviction as having been wrongly obtained.
So wouldn't you think the US would appeal a district court overturning SCOTUS precedent? Especially since they had a really good compelling reason for not releasing that information (i.e., it would disclose that the codes were broken). But they don't bother to appeal.
Shortly after this, congress apologized to Japanese Americans. Japan, though, has not apologized so far, in spite of this peer pressure.
In 1992, congress decides to pay reparations to the survivors of the camps (about 50% are still alive). They each get $20K (total of $1B). So this again ratchets up pressure on Japan (and of course Germany, although they've made some reparations).
Note that the US also forcibly removed Aleutian Island citizens (in preparation for the Japanese invasion, which actually did happen). They each got $12K. So when you see equal protection clauses mentioning Aleutian Islanders, that's why it's there.
Of course, Japanese Americans aren't the only Americans to have suffered race discriminations. African Americans and Native Americans, most notably, might think reparations are in order for themselves, if other folks are getting some. But of course reparations for those groups would be too huge to carry out (this same limit falls on Germany).
The US also paid some reparations to Peruvian Japanese who were shipped to the US for internment ($5K each). And note that the memorial to the victims of internment was set up in DC before the memorial to American servicement.
And in 2003, CA passed a statute saying that survivors of Japanese POW camps (etc.) can sue the companies that had enslaved them during the war. Federal courts say that's unconstitutional: states can't set foreign policy-- we have treaties with Japan. So this is like Martin v. Hunter's Lessee. Suits in Japan have been rebuffed.