| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | Korematsy is excluded from the area around San Leandro, pursuant to Exclusion Order #34 of the Army. |
| Posture: | Convicted in federal district court. |
| Issue: | Can such an order be constitutional? |
| Holding: | Yes, there's a war on. Affirmed. |
| Rule: | When under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must e commensurate with the threatened danger. |
| Reasoning: | The war power is very strong, and Korematsu wasn't excluded because
of his race-- it was because we are at war with the Japanese
Empure.
Hardships are part of war, and there are at least some people of Japanese descent in the US who retain loyalty to the empire. |
| Dicta: | Frankfurter (concurring): It does not make sense to talk about a war
order as being unconstitutional.
Murphy (dissenting): To infer that examples of individual disloyalty prove group disloyalty and justify discriminatory action against the entire group is to deny that under our system of law individual guilt is the sole basis for privation of rights. Jackson (dissenting): Guilt is personal and not inheritable. The courts must abide by the constitution or they'll just be courts of military policy. The court can'tbe asked to execute a military expedient that has no place in law under the constitution. |