In 1944 the Supreme Court handed down its Korematsu v. U.S. decision, ruling that it was legal to suspend the civil rights of all Japanese Americans and forcibly relocate them to internment camps during WWII.
This decision uprooted and traumatized 120,000 Japanese Americans.
In 1980 a Congressional Commission finally declared the Korematsu decision overruled. The Civil Liberties Act of 1985 then granted reparations to those Japanese Americans locked in camps during the war. And in the 2018 SCOTUS decision in Trump v. Hawaii, Chief Justice Roberts called Korematsu “gravely wrong the day it was decided…and—to be clear—has no place in law under the constitution.”
So those are the four anticanon decisions:
- Dred Scott v. Sanford
- Plessy v. Ferguson
- Lochner v. NY
- Korematsu v. U.S.
I’m guessing that thirty years from now, the country will look back and put a few more SCOTUS decisions into that anticanon.
One Response
I agree with you about more will be added to this list. Thanks for putting them all together like this. Very informative.