Editing Robert H. Jackson (section)

====Jackson's dissent====

The Supreme Court decided that the President and Congress did not stretch their war powers too far by choosing national security over an individual's rights in a time of war. Justice Hugo Black wrote the majority opinion for this case, and Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion. The opening paragraph of Jackson's dissent illustrated his view of the case:

<blockquote>Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity, and a citizen of California by residence. No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here, he is not law-abiding and well- disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.<ref name="BanksSmolla2010">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KdQkk9J-P4oC&pg=PT463|title=Constitutional Law: Structure and Rights in Our Federal System|date=6 May 2010|publisher=LexisNexis|isbn=978-0-327-17509-4|pages=462–465|author1=William C. Banks|author2=Rodney Smolla|access-date=June 25, 2017|archive-date=August 19, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819134621/https://books.google.com/books?id=KdQkk9J-P4oC&pg=PT463|url-status=live}}</ref></blockquote>

Jackson warned of the danger that this great allowance of executive power presented, through the War Department's ability to deprive individuals of their rights in favor of national security in time of war:

<blockquote>But if we cannot confine military expedients by the Constitution, neither would I distort the Constitution to approve all that the military may deem expedient. That is what the Court appears to be doing, whether consciously or not. I cannot say, from any evidence 	before me, that the orders of General DeWitt were not reasonably expedient military precautions, nor could I say that they were. But even if they were permissible military 	procedures, I deny that it follows that they are constitutional. If, as the Court holds, it does follow, then we may as well say that any military order will be constitutional, and have done with it.<ref name="BarnettKatz2014">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=06nfDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT706|title=Constitutional Law: Cases in Context|date=9 December 2014|publisher=Wolters Kluwer Law & Business|isbn=978-1-4548-2920-1|pages=705–707|author1=Randy E. Barnett|author2=Howard E. Katz|access-date=June 25, 2017|archive-date=August 18, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200818162128/https://books.google.com/books?id=06nfDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT706|url-status=live}}</ref></blockquote>

Jackson was not concerned in evaluating the validity of DeWitt's claim that the internment of Japanese citizens on the West Coast was necessary for national security purposes, but whether this would set a precedent of war-time racial discrimination that would be used to strip individual liberties.

<blockquote>But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principles of racial discrimination in criminal procedure, and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking, and expands it to new purposes.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3JCjZWrQjA4C&pg=PA229|title=Encyclopedia of Supreme Court Quotations|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|isbn=978-0-7656-1825-2|pages=227–231|year=2000|access-date=June 25, 2017|archive-date=August 18, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200818173504/https://books.google.com/books?id=3JCjZWrQjA4C&pg=PA229|url-status=live}}</ref></blockquote>

[[File:Warren Supreme Court.jpg|thumb|Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, in 1953: second from the left, in the back row. Also pictured are, from the left, in the bottom row: Felix Frankfurter; Hugo Black; Earl Warren (Chief Justice); Stanley Reed; William O. Douglas. In the back row, from left: Tom Clark; Robert H. Jackson; Harold Burton; Sherman Minton]]