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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
Korematsu’S Ancestors, Mark A. Graber
Korematsu’S Ancestors, Mark A. Graber
Arkansas Law Review
Mark Killenbeck’s Korematsu v. United States has important affinities with Dred Scott v. Sandford. Both decisions by promoting and justifying white supremacy far beyond what was absolutely mandated by the constitutional text merit their uncontroversial inclusion in the anticanon of American constitutional law.3 Dred Scott held that former slaves and their descendants could not be citizens of the United States and that Congress could not ban slavery in American territories acquired after the Constitution was ratified.5 Korematsu held that the military could exclude all Japanese Americans from portions of the West Coast during World War II.6 Both decisions nevertheless provided …
Disestablishing "The Last Plantation": The Need For Accountability In The United States Department Of Agriculture, Seth L. Ellis
Disestablishing "The Last Plantation": The Need For Accountability In The United States Department Of Agriculture, Seth L. Ellis
Journal of Food Law & Policy
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. At the signing ceremony, President Lincoln declared the Department of Agriculture to be the "people's Department" because he said it governed an industry "in which [citizens felt] more directly concerned than in any other. .. ." Today, many American citizens do not share Abraham Lincoln's view of the USDA as being the "people's Department"; rather, they identify it as being "the last plantation" due to its long history of open discrimination against African-American farmers. While this discrimination has occurred throughout America's history, perhaps …
A Government Of Laws That Is A Government Of Men And Women, Mark Tushnet
A Government Of Laws That Is A Government Of Men And Women, Mark Tushnet
Arkansas Law Review
I take Mark Killenbeck’s “provocative” article as an occasion for some informal comments about what Korematsu and Trump v. Hawaii tell us about the saying, “a government of laws, not a government of men and women.” My basic thought is that the “not” in the saying has to be replaced “but also.” And, in some sense we have always had to have known that the saying was wrong as stated. Whatever the laws are, they don’t make themselves. Nor do they administer themselves, nor interpret themselves. Men and women appear at the stages of enactment, application, and adjudication. So, for …
A Proper Burial, Robert L. Tsai
A Proper Burial, Robert L. Tsai
Arkansas Law Review
In his article, Professor Mark Killenbeck defends both Korematsu v. United States and Trump v. Hawaii on their own terms, albeit on narrow grounds. He goes on to conclude that comparisons of the two decisions don’t hold up. Killenbeck has authored a thoughtful and contrarian paper, but I’m not sold. In my view, Korematsu simply isn’t worth saving; in fact, a more complete repudiation of the internment decisions is overdue. Trump v. Hawaii, too, must also be revisited at the earliest opportunity and its more alarming features that abet presidential discrimination against non-citizens rejected. Moreover, I believe that comparisons between …
Tainted Precedent, Darrell A.H. Miller
Tainted Precedent, Darrell A.H. Miller
Arkansas Law Review
We have a common law system of constitutional adjudication, at least in the sense that constitutional practice in the United States relies on prior rulings rather than reasoning from first principles in each case. If there’s controlling precedent on point, it’s binding. Neither “inferior courts” in the federal system, nor state courts adjudicating federal law, are permitted to start anew with the “original public meaning” of the First Amendment or pronounce a fresh Dworkinian “moral reading” of the Fourth. Even the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States, for reasons of reputation, stability, and rule …
There Was Nothing "Neutral" About Executive Order 9066, Eric L. Muller
There Was Nothing "Neutral" About Executive Order 9066, Eric L. Muller
Arkansas Law Review
There is no more appropriate place to discuss the Japanese American cases of World War II than in the pages of the Arkansas Law Review. This is not only because Arkansas was the only state outside the Western Defense Command to host not one but two of the War Relocation Authority’s (WRA) concentration camps for Japanese Americans. It is because one of the most important lawyers to oversee the development and administration of all the WRA camps was the dean under whose leadership this law review was founded: Robert A. Leflar. Leflar’s is not a name that constitutional lawyers are …
Korematsu, Hawaii, And Pedagogy, Sanford Levinson
Korematsu, Hawaii, And Pedagogy, Sanford Levinson
Arkansas Law Review
I begin with some reflections on my own career in teaching—or, perhaps, attempting to teach—American constitutional law to generations of students from 1975 to the present. Or, more accurately, until about three years ago, when I taught introductory constitutional law for the last time. I am quite happy to no longer be teaching that course, whatever joys it did provide me in the past, for a very simple reason: I became more and more frustrated by the demands of coverage, i.e., the duty to take up a variety of topics—including attendant cases and collateral materials—and the unfortunate certainty that what …
Korematsu As The Tribute That Vice Pays To Virtue, Jack M. Balkin
Korematsu As The Tribute That Vice Pays To Virtue, Jack M. Balkin
Arkansas Law Review
Mark Killenbeck wants to (partially) rehabilitate the reputation of one of the Supreme Court’s most despised legal decisions, Korematsu v. United States. He argues that “[w]e should accept and teach Korematsu as an exemplar of what thelaw regarding invidious discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin should be.” In both Korematsu (and Hirabayashi v. United States) the Court asserted that classifications based on race were subject to strict scrutiny. But “[t]he majority,” Killenbeck explains, “refused to heed their own mandate. In Hirabayashi they held that the government policy was ‘reasonable.’ In Korematsu, . . . they failed …
Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered, Mark R. Killenbeck
Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered, Mark R. Killenbeck
Arkansas Law Review
How to best describe and treat Korematsu v. United States? A self-inflicted wound? It is certainly an exemplar of a case that in key respects tracks Justice Stephen Breyer’s caution about decisions that have “harm[ed] not just the Court, but the Nation.” Part of an “Anticanon,” resting on “little more than naked racism and associated hokum” and “embod[ying] a set of propositions that all legitimate constitutional decisions must be prepared to refute”? Perhaps. Or is it simply an opinion and result that “has long stood out as a stain that is almost universally recognized as a shameful mistake”?