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There was no way to make individual decisions when the basis of the action could not be revealed (decryption of Japanese cyphers.) The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The relocated persons were treated reasonably humanely.

Nor were the relocations illegal. The Supreme Court said the relocations were legal. That decision has not been overruled. And we are now in a better position to understand FDR's policy -- and the Supreme Court's reasoning -- than people in recent decades were before 9/11.

You are right that the US Supreme Court never overruled its own 1944 decision in Korematsu v. US. They were given two chances to overrule that horrendous decision, and ducked both of them.

However, a US District Court ruled, at Fred Korematsu's request in 1990 (give or take a year) that his conviction was illegal because its basis was unconstitutional. (That happened after General deWitt's internal documents were declassified.) The Circuit Court agreed.

The government then took that case to the US Supreme Court. In an instance which I think is unique in the entire history of the USSC, it refused the case and simply left standing a lower court decision which said it had acted unconstitutionally.

Can you think of any other instance when a lower court ruled that the Supreme Court had acted unconstitutionally, and the USSC did not take and review the case?

Billybob

Nor were the relocations illegal. The Supreme Court said the relocations were legal.

Since the word of the Supreme Court settles the issue, forever and aye, I assume that you will be dropping in on every FR abortion thread from now on to tell people that the subject is closed and that they should shut up already.