Japanese internees see modern parallels
What’s our law schools teaching on this topic? I’m sure Con Law classes must be a-twitter over this. They should be reversing Korematsu!
I visited Manzanar last year around this time. I couldn’t freaking believe how beautiful this place was, smack in the middle of Owens Valley between two mountain ranges. It was isolated that’s for sure, but beautiful. Why is it that sometimes the most tragic situations come with beauty attached?
=YC
Back on Sept. 22, 2003, PL and I went to hear Dale Minami lecture at NYU School of Law, as part of the A/P/A Studies Program’s Fall 2003 events. Minami was the attorney who helped to overturn the arrest of Korematsu and the others (they went up to appeals, short of getting the Supremes) back in the 1980’s. Feel free to visit the website (http://www.nyu.edu/apa/index2.htm) for the link to audio of the lecture and Q&A. I thought it was really interesting – both for Minami’s views and for the amount of students in the audience who either knew a lot about Korematsu (evidentally law students) or demonstrated that they knew so little (I think they were undergrads, but couldn’t be sure). The pattern being reflected in the current detentions is certainly worrisome. History runs the risk of repeating itself.
I took Con Law before 2001, so I can’t say how a-twitter it was. But, that fall 2001, I was taking Criminal Procedure (search and seizure and all the constitutional issues before the bail and jail, as Prof. H. would say), and the students themselves broke down into their respective political sides, to no surprise. Reversing Korematsu wouldn’t be easy, unfortunately, considering the climate we’re in – and how easy that it came about in the first place.