Antonin Scalia, the longest serving justice currently on the U.S. Supreme Court and one of the most conservative, says the dissenting decision in the Korematsu case is his favorite court opinion of all time, reports SF Gate.
The court in 1944 voted 6 – 3 to uphold the conviction of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American man who refused to obey orders to report to incarceration camps during World War II.
“Here is an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign,” Jackson wrote in his opinion at the time.
“It was nice to know that at least somebody on the court realized that that was wrong,” Scalia told a group of University of Santa Clara law students.
Korematsu’s conviction would eventually be overturned decades later.
The decision wasn’t overturned. Korematsu’s conviction was vacated. Not the same thing.
from the Fred Korematsu Institute: "On November 10, 1983, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned in a federal court in San Francisco. It was a pivotal moment in civil rights history." http://korematsuinstitute.org/institute/aboutfred…