Today in Supreme Court History: May 11, 1942

5/11/1942: Gordon Hirabayashi "failed to report to the Civil Control Station within the designated area." The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of his conviction in Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943).

Gordon Hirabayashi

Comments

[Frank Drackman]

Unanimous

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Today's Mother's Day. Each justice had a mother. So, it is an important day in Supreme Court History.

Wikipedia notes:

After his arrest, he was approached by an acquaintance, liberal Washington State Senator Mary Farquharson, who suggested that he make his case a test case. She organized a support committee for Hirabayashi and served as its secretary-treasurer as the committee raised funds for his legal defense.

Later:

In 1986 and 1987, Hirabayashi's convictions on both charges were overturned by the U.S. District Court in Seattle and the Federal Appeals Court, because evidence arose that the Solicitor General's office (led by Charles H. Fahy) had cited examples of Japanese American sabotage in its 1943–44 Supreme Court arguments, despite having researched and debunked all the rumored incidents. In 2011, the Acting Solicitor General officially confessed error in that regard. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued the final decision as Hirabayashi v. United States in 1987.

In May 2012, President Obama posthumously awarded Gordon Hirabayashi the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor.

[Supremacy Claus]

A shameful episode of lawyer bad judgment. These doofuses could not read the plain language, high school vocabulary of the constitution. No one loves the USA more than a grateful immigrant. The decision shows that all judge rulings are no more than bias, hysterical feelings, cultural beliefs, bad moods, sandwich remedied hanger, political pressure, personal interests, bullying of the weak by the powerful. None has evidence of any reliability (repeatability) let alone the slightest evidence of external validation. This garbage profession must be cancelled.

[Darth Buckeye]

This decision and the whole policy was disgraceful

[Frank Drackman]

It was a unanimous decision

[Dr. Ed 2]

We will never know how many would have spied for Japan.

[Mr. Bumble]

But we do know how many joined the armed service and fought bravely for their new country.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

We will never know who you have spied for.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

We do know that Japanese immigrants in Hawaii were not relocated to concentration camps. How strange is that! They were far more capable of doing real spy damage.

[Frank Drackman]

If they'd put all the Japanese in one place the Island might have tipped over (HT H. Johnson (D) GA)

[Darth Buckeye]

Good thing Biden had not been elected President in 1940. His state department would have allowed millions of military age Japanese men to "extra-legally" migrate to the US and not imposed any controls on them.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Good thing Trump was not elected in 1940. He would have blocked trade with Japan and have led to war in 1941.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

We can have some fun with this sort of thing, including wondering how many people around here would support the internment of the Japanese & how many would oppose it.

At the time, Governor Earl Warren supported the policy.

To toss it out there, "Sulu" from Star Trek was detained as a child & later the actor was in an excellent play about the internment. One good bit of history is a child librarian who supplied books to interned children:

https://nhdhopemikaila.weebly.com/clara-breed.html

[Mr. Bumble]

Sulu (George Takei) should have been deported.

[Estragon]

On what basis?

I think you should be deported. Makes about as much sense.

[Mr. Bumble]

Turn of your sarc meter on Sunday's?

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Deported by teleportation, I presume.

[BrotherMovesOn]

"Scotty ... Energize"

[Stupid Government Tricks]

No, Scotty was deported too after filing a woke harassment claim.

[Darth Buckeye]

George is a loyal American. His detention was a disgrace. Japanese Americans fought with distinction during WWII.

[Darth Buckeye]

Just to be clear of my sentiments, the internment of Americans of Japanese descent was a disgraceful chapter in American history. I've met George Takei many times. I've been to the Japanese American National Museum with my wife who is also of Japanese descent.
I've also been to the National Holocaust Museum in DC. Crimes against humanity are crimes. But there are orders of magnitude of difference.

[Sarcastr0]

You make a racist charge about hypothetical Japanese "military age" immigrants in the 1940s, and then say 'but I'm not racist about the actual Japanese-Americans at the time!'

How did you think this would play?

[Speaking for normal people]

I suppose you picked that as -what you thought ---was a quick hidden knife to Trump. But Korematsu was upheld. Do you read these cases first ? That somebody is gay or Japanese or a drag queen is irrelevant because even such can be dangerous. You want to enshrine the idea that if you are part of certain group that gives you moral vaccination against being a bastard. Won't see with normal people. All Tren de Arague might be Venezuelan but so what????? IF you are sht for the country-- bye, bye.

Maybe you want to cast shade on Dobbs by a kind of submilinal linke to Korematsu.

"Justice Alito?s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization seeks to justify overturning Roe v. Wade on grounds that "Roe was egregiously wrong (emphasis added) from the start? in the same vein as two other notorious Supreme Court decisions upholding blatant racial discrimination, Korematsu v. United States and Plessy v. Ferguson. The leaked draft references a past concurring opinion by Justice Kavanaugh in which he stated that the Korematsu v. United States decision (1944) was discredited because it was egregiously wrong when decided."

OR maybe it's Trump, can't tell with you guys
Anyway the relevant analogue is Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus later adjudged the right thing to do by Congress.

"This provision plainly attests the understanding of those who made the constitution that ordinary courts of justice are inadequate to "cases of Rebellion'' -- attests their purpose that in such cases, men may be held in custody whom the courts acting on ordinary rules, would discharge. Habeas Corpus, does not discharge men who are proved to be guilty of defined crime; and its suspension is allowed by the constitution on purpose that, men may be arrested and held, who can not be proved to be guilty of defined crime, "when, in cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.'' This is precisely our present case -- a case of Rebellion, wherein the public Safety does require the suspension. Indeed, arrests by process of courts, and arrests in cases of rebellion, do not proceed altogether upon the same basis."

[Speaking for normal people]

In any other area of human history it would be considered insane that this man is treated a certain way because he is Japanese and then is honored because he was treated a certain way. all it says to normal people is that nobody cares about what is right. Certainly not Obama. This hearkens back to Lincoln's justified suspension of habeas corpus. My genius brother and my argued-before-Supreme Court brother-in-law,both savaged Lincoln their whole lives and felt "oh so superior" doing it. But Congress vindicated Lincoln so I think it is just raw disgusting hubris at worst. Maybe they are just pharasaical hyper-moralists but , really, times of war and insurrection and death by the hundreds of thousands. it should not be treated like an algebra word problem

LINCOLN SAID what no Reason reader or Libertarian would defend but he was right and you are all wrong

“Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?,” Lincoln asked. “Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken, if the government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law, would tend to preserve it?”

Lawyers, a loathably amoral bunch

[Frank Drackman]

In 50 years the "Roe" decision will be considered just as horrible, (I already consider it that way, but some of you Rubes are a little slow)

[Supremacy Claus]

Without Roe, there would be 60 million more Democrats of voting age. 20 million would be blacks. Imagine the shitholing, the crime rates of the USA without this wonderful lawyer gift of Roe.

[Syd Henderson]

Yick Wo is my favorite case in the late 19th century and contrasted with several notorious cases from that time. It finally helped overturn Jim Crow and is really relevant today.

[Speaking for normal people]

THat this supposedly obvious Constitutional point has been decided in totally opposite ways, I'd say Trump gains points for questioning that very point

"judges in the 5th Circuit applied a recent Second Amendment precedent, interpreting the term “the people” in the Second Amendment to exclude undocumented immigrants"

[Stuart]

Ah, the good old days; right Josh?