Hirabayashi v. United States (1943) and Korematsu v. United States (1944) are two landmark cases in the history of the United States that addressed the issue of internment of Japanese American during the Second World War. These cases were brought to the U.S. Supreme Court on the premise that the American government violated the Fifth Amendment rights of the defendants due to their ancestry. The main concern that contributed to these lawsuits was whether strong war powers needed by the government to defeat a formidable enemy can be harmonized with the absolute constitutional rights of people. Moreover, they sought to address whether individual freedoms or rights of certain people can be sacrificed temporary to the demand of national survival. The Supreme Court’s ruling in these cases was based on evaluation of the Fifth Amendment rights that were allegedly abused.
What Fifth Amendment issues did Hirabayashi and Korematsu argue were being violated? As previously mentioned, the two landmark cases were brought to the United States Supreme Court …show more content…
United States, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. government by upholding the curfew regulation for Japanese Americans who lived in Military Area 1. Moreover, the court stated that the federal government has used its constitutional powers appropriately. The ruling was based on the premise that while racial discrimination is prohibited, the need to safeguard national security during war necessitated consideration of ancestry and race as the basis of confining some groups of people. In Korematsu v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government’s war powers were provided by the Constitution, which implied that the Fifth Amendment rights were not breached. It upheld legislation that required Japanese Americans in the Pacific coastal region to present themselves to an assembly area of probable transfer and internment in other parts of the