Saturday, August 7, 2010

What significant court cases have dealt with Racial/Ethnic Profiling?

Well, the US Supreme Court, in Korematsu, said that rounding up all Japanese-Americans in the western US and putting them in internment camps and taking their property was OK. This has been one of the most criticized Supreme Court cases ever, right up there with Plessy v. Ferguson's 'separate but equal' doctrine, and it is highly questionable if Korematsu was constitutional (especially dealing with Equal Protection issues). Today, such a case would almost definitely have gone the other way, but it has never been explicitly overturned so it would still be considered 'good' law (as in binding precedent; not because it was a well-reasoned case). The link below is to the Korematsu opinion.

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