Korematsu v. United States (1944)

Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, an American citizen of Japanese descent, refused to leave San Leandro , California and report to an assembly center prior to being removed to an internment camp.  The entire West Coast and southern Arizona had been designated as "military zones" from which Japanese-Americans were excluded.  The Supreme Court by 6-3 ruled that the president and Congress did not go beyond their war powers when it excluded people of Japanese descent and restricted the rights of Japanese-Americans.  The court said that the need to protect against espionage outweighed Korematsu's rights.  Writing for the majority, Justice Hugo Black denied that discrimination on racial grounds lay behind the exclusion order and argued instead that "there was evidence of disloyalty" on the part of some people of Japanese descent.  He acknowledged the hardships that removal caused, but said "hardships are a part of war."  In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Frank Murphy declared that exclusion on the basis of military necessity in the absence of martial law goes over "the very brink of constitutional power and falls into the ugly abyss of racism."  He also wrote that the majority opinion amounted to the "legalization of racism."  The Korematsu ruling has never been reversed by the Supreme Court, although in 1983 Fred Korematsu's conviction for refusing to be interned was overturned by a federal district court judge.

Read the decision: http://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1949/1944/1944_22/