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January 10, 2006
Ask About Hirabayashi!
D
uring questioning by Senator Feingold today, Sam Alito volunteered that the "Japanese internment cases" were "one of the great constitutional tragedies our country has experienced."
It intrigues me that Sam said "cases"--in the plural--rather than speaking just of Korematsu, the case in which the Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of the exclusion of American citizens of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.
Was Sam also referring to the 1943 Hirabayashi case, in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of the dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed on Japanese Americans before their evacuation? Was that case also a "great constitutional tragedy?"
Seems like a great follow-up question to me.
Posted by Eric at January 10, 2006 11:40 PM