RAC Format:
“I” stands for issue(s). What issue(s) is the Court being asked to decide ?
“R” stands for ruling. How did the Court rule on the issue before it ?
“A” stands for analysis. How did the Court arrive at its decision ? What reasoning led
them to it ?
“C” stands for conclusion. What is the final outcome of the ruling ? Are there any major
changes as a result of it ?
Please note that the exemplar includes two additional items: Case History and
Facts. The case’s history is basic: Where did it come from ? Was it a case of original
jurisdiction as defined under the Constitution ? Did it come up from a Circuit Court ? Or
did it come in from a state’s supreme court ? Please be sure to add this information at
the top of your brief. The facts of the case are simple: What happened that started this
case on its way to the Supreme Court ? The exemplar summarized the facts superbly.
Perhaps the most important element in this exercise is what’s missing: your
opinion. You may not include your opinion of the Court’s ruling(s).
The exemplar below should help you in understanding the scope and expectation of this
assignment. Obviously, Korematsu is not on the list of cases you can choose from.
POLS 301 Case Brief Exemplar
by SB
Toyosaburo Korematsu vs. United States
323 U.S. 214 (1944)
Certiorari granted October 11, 1944
from The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals
Facts of the Case
In the initial years of America’s involvement in World War II, Japanese American citizen
Toyosaburo Korematsu was convicted for residing in a military area in San Leandro,
California after May 9, 1942. Korematsu’s refusal to leave violated California’s Civilian
Exclusion Order Number 34, which called for the exclusion of any person with Japanese
ancestry, regardless of American citizenship, from military areas. This order was based
on the permissions granted to the military by Presidential Executive Order 9066.
Korematsu was convicted in a federal district court. The circuit court of appeals affirmed
the federal court’s opinion. The case specifies that Korematsu’s loyalty to the United
States is not in question.
Issue A: Is Civilian Exclusion Order Number 34 justified under the Constitution?
Issue B: What is the level of scrutiny that should be given to legislation where
specific racial identities are discriminated against?
Ruling A. Civilian Executive Order Number 34 is justifiable because war time
supersedes the discrimination against persons of Japanese ancestry in the law due to
circumstances of governmental importance.
Ruling B. Laws that discriminate against groups belonging to the same race or
ethnic background should have a strict level of scrutiny applied to them.
Analysis (Chief Justice Hugo Black, writing for the court’s majority opinion): Reasons
that laws restricting the civil rights of racial minorities are discriminatory and should be
put under strict scrutiny. In this case, because people of Japanese descent were solely
targeted, the strictest scrutiny ought to be in place. However, that does not indicate said
laws are inherently unconstitutional and so it’s constitutionality would not be debated by
the majority. Public necessity, especially in times of war, justifies the loss of civil
liberties; the public necessity in this case being the looming dangers of war and the
threat of Japanese espionage and attack on American soil.
Justice Black compares Korematsu’s case and the case of Hirabayashi vs. United
States [320 81 (1943)] which upheld set curfew orders enacted solely on people of
Japanese origin. The court also affirmed that the orders were not beyond the powers of
government. According to Justice Black, both Hirabayashi and Korematsu call into
question the same executive orders and Act of Congress. The Act of Congress from
March 21, 1942 permits charging fines of or imprisoning persons who knowingly and
illegally enter, leave, reside or commit an act in any military area. Black states that both
exclusion and mandated curfews were actions in service to public safety under a
military area. These reasons were validated under Presidential Executive Order No.
9066, allowing the protection against espionage and sabotage to military areas. Black
argues that the Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 is justified under this presidential
executive order.
He further remarks that military officials could not readily differentiate between loyal and
disloyal Japanese American citizens in such a critical window of time. Because of these
challenges, military officials deemed it necessary to group people of Japanese descent
together by way of curfew and later exclusion on the same grounds. Justice Black notes
that after Hirabayashi was upheld, an estimated five thousand Japanese Americans
refused to renounce allegiance to Japanese Emperor Hirohito and swear allegiance to
the United States. The military, and by extension Justice Black, infer that this
segregation of loyal and disloyal Japanese Americans could not have happened
without these orders applying to all persons of Japanese ancestry.
Justice Black then remarks on the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship and the
hardships of war at which the United States faced. While excluding large swaths of
citizens from their homes is usually regarded as unconstitutional, the urgencies of
wartime called for drastic protection equitable to the perceived threats of the day.
Justice Black argues that Korematsu was not excluded due to his race, but because the
country was at war against a nation his ancestry happened to descend from, and
because military experts deemed it necessary and urgent to protect the United States
by way of exclusion; a power granted by Congress. Despite the opportunity to look back
at past actions, Justice Black affirms that the court cannot declare those wartime
actions protected under the law unjustifiable.
Justice Felix Frankfurter, Concurring: Hirabayashi solidifies the military’s
order, confirming Korematsu’s actions as a crime. He further argues that the case
belongs solely in the civil courts, adding that the order is exercising powers to wage war
granted by the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, affirming the conviction.
Dissent: Justice Owen Roberts argues for the case being that of a citizen accused for
the crime of refusal to reside in a concentration camp on the basis of his Japanese
ancestry and nothing else. Justice Roberts found no questioning or evidence that
proved the defendant’s disloyalty to the United States. The removal of the defendant
from a military area was not exclusion, but forceable detention. He shares the timeline
of events leading from the start of the war in order to show that both Civilian Executive
Order No. 34, commanding him to leave the area, and the order which regulated the
defendant to not leave the area were both simultaneously in effect. Therefore, the only
way the defendant could not have committed a crime was to turn himself over to the
military. Justice Roberts remarks that punishing Korematsu for either contradictory order
would be in violation of the defendant’s right to due process.
Justice Murphy dissents as well, addressing the “legalization of racism” in the exclusion
order. Nearly everyone living in the United States at some point in ancestry or culture is
associated with another country, but they are all citizens and should be granted the
same rights laid out in the Constitution. He notes the order went into effect without the
declaration of martial law; that the loss of rights to a citizen can only be taken if there is
pressing, imminent danger. Because of the absence of martial law, the military has
limitations on when it can deprive citizens of civil rights.
Justice Murphy specifically names the rights contained in the Fifth Amendment as being
taken from citizens of Japanese descent under the exclusion order. Civilian Exclusion
Order No. 34 assumes that all people of Japanese origin have the ability and want to
ally with Japan and there is no substantial evidence that proves this. Citizens of Italian,
German, and other Americans of European descent were also caught engaging in
“disloyal acts” and were not punished as a group. Murphy then argues that
incriminating a group based on the actions of an individual was similar to the practices
of the same enemy the nation faced.
Justice Jackson, also in Dissent, also addresses the contradictory orders and the
defendant’s American citizenship, equally criticizing General DeWitt’s final report. He
mentions punishment for one’s ancestry as illegal under Article Three of the Constitution
where the actions of a citizen’s ancestors should not fault their descendants. The
defendant had no choice in the matter of his race or parentage. To Justice Jackson, the
Civilian Exclusion Order makes those identifiers a crime. Jackson does not question
whether the order itself is reasonable for the Court to take up as he believes that it falls
under the military’s discernment, but unconstitutional acts such as the exclusion order
should be subject to judicial review.
Conclusion A: The urgency of war supersedes the discrimination against persons of
Japanese ancestry in the law due to circumstances of governmental importance,
therefore Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 is justifiable.
Conclusion B: Legislation that solely pertains to groups belonging to the same race or
ethnic background should have a strict level of scrutiny applied to them in court.
Summation: The actions that lead to Korematsu vs. United States were products of
the
post-Pearl Harbor fears of invasion imbedded into the American public at the time. For
decades, this case solidified the rights of the military to discriminate against people of a
certain ancestry if it was deemed necessary in times of war. Any person of any race,
religion, or creed could suffer the same consequences as the defendant in this case.
The ruling granted power to the military and revoked the civil liberties of citizens when
not under martial law. This case and its ruling lives on seventy-six years later in Trump
vs. Hawaii [878 F. 3d 662 (2017)]. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent puts focus on the
similarities of said case and Korematsu’s. Both laws were under executive orders that
withheld a certain race (people of Japanese ancestry) or ethnic minority (Muslims) from
their rights. She refers to Korematsu as “a sordid legacy” then states that the decision
of Trump vs. Hawaii overruled that of Korematsu by denouncing it, but argues that it
upholds the same sort of policies that were protected under the guise of “national
security” in Korematsu. Those similar policies still live with us today in 2020 and affect
the lives and civil liberties of every citizen should another Executive Order or any piece
of legislation that denies the freedoms of Americans under the excuses of war go into effects.
