Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Truth, Reconciliation, and Korematsu v. United States
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2021
⏱️ 64 minutes
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Summary
The incarceration of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans in the 1940s is one of the most shameful acts in American history. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Judge Edward M Chen and Don Tamaki, members of the legal team that worked to clear Fred Korematsu’s name almost 40 years after his conviction, to discuss the overlooked context, corruption, and cover-up that enabled the policy, and to examine how the Supreme Court has yet to fully contend with the legacy of Korematsu v United States. They also unpack the lessons the case offers for the present moment.
The documentary discussed is Alternative Facts: The Lies of Executive Order 9066.
Podcast production by Sara Burningham.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The whistleblowers who called upon the Attorney General and the Solicitor General to tell the truth |
| 0:12.7 | and who had plainly said in their memos that were about to tell lies to the U.S. Supreme Court, |
| 0:19.5 | they were rebuffed, and they kept their |
| 0:22.0 | mouth shut. The government has enormous amount of leverage, enormous amount of power, has monopoly |
| 0:27.5 | on the information. If anything, underscores the duty of the court to serve as a check, |
| 0:33.7 | to make sure that the civil liberties, the civil rights, and the constitutional rights of the citizenry are protected, |
| 0:40.1 | and that the government is being forthright, |
| 0:42.7 | and that the playing field is level. |
| 0:45.6 | And it didn't do so in this case. |
| 1:00.6 | I don't know. Hi, and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the Supreme Court and the courts and the law and the rule of law. |
| 1:07.0 | I'm Dahlia Lithwick. I cover a whole bunch of those things for Slate. And on this, the first show of 2021, we are going to actually take a moment to look back, to look like a long way back to World War II and the Japanese internment. |
| 1:22.3 | And one of the most shocking stories of corruption of the Constitution and corruption of the judicial process all the way up to the Supreme Court in U.S. history. |
| 1:33.8 | And my urge to revisit this chapter of history was actually sparked by a film that I watched in the summer of 2020. |
| 1:42.8 | The documentary was called Alternative Facts, |
| 1:45.9 | The Lies of Executive Order 9066. And it's actually about the factual basis, the underpinning |
| 1:52.1 | for the Japanese internment during World War II and all the ways in which just completely |
| 1:58.0 | fake facts, known fake facts, became not just a part of the litigation record in Korematsu and related cases all the way up to the Supreme Court, but actually then became a part of Supreme Court doctrine itself. |
| 2:12.5 | I decided to just replicate an incredible panel I did this past summer for the American |
| 2:18.7 | Constitution Society's Ohio branch. And on the panel, we talked not just about the movie |
| 2:24.1 | and about that history, the largely lost history, but all the ways in which it still echoes |
| 2:30.5 | and resonates today. First, just a quick heads up to our Slate Plus members who are no |
| 2:36.6 | doubt longing for their fix from Mark Joseph Stern. Mark will be back in two weeks for our |
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