In October 1944, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in Korematsu v. United States. In the case, Fred Korematsu, a U.S. citizen, challenged the constitutionality of his federal criminal conviction for violating a U.S. Army order excluding him, because he was of Japanese ethnicity, from the west coast of the U.S. during World War II.
Two months after the oral arguments, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, affirmed Korematsu’s conviction. Justices Owen J. Roberts, Frank Murphy, and Robert H. Jackson were the dissenters.
The Korematsu decision was and is one of the most infamous decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history. Korematsu is, along with the other “Japanese-American Cases” that the Supreme Court decided in the 1940s, a case to remember and to study.
Last month, eighty years after the Supreme Court oral arguments in Korematsu, George Washington University Law School hosted a program, cosponsored by the Robert H. Jackson Center and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association. The program featured a reenactment of the 1944 Korematsu oral arguments in the Supreme Court and then a “re-litigation” of a mock trial court civil case as it would be litigated by a “Fred Korematsu” today.
Beginning today, this program will be aired on C-SPAN. It contains these segments:
- Welcoming remarks by Kristan McMahon, president of the Robert H. Jackson Center;
- My introduction, “The Japanese-American Cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, 1942-1944;”
- Reenactment of the October 1944 Korematsu oral arguments:
- Roy Englert, Jr. (Kramer Levin), representing the United States;
- Robert Long (Covington & Burling), representing Fred Korematsu;
- “Justices”:
- U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman (D.D.C.);
- Judge Kelly Higashi (D.C. Superior Court);
- Professor Cliff Sloan (Georgetown University Law Center);
- “Re-litigation” of a contemporary civil case brought by a “Fred Korematsu”:
- Kyle Singhal (Hopwood & Singhal), representing the United States;
- Minsuk Han (Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel, & Frederick), representing Korematsu;
- “Judge”: Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew (George Washington University Law School); and
- Closing remarks: Associate Dean Alan B. Morrison (George Washington University Law School).
This program will air today on C-SPAN2 at 4:20 p.m. EST.
It will air again tomorrow at 4:20 p.m. EST.
It will also be available thereafter on C-SPAN’s website: https://www.c-span.org/.
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