The Endo Symposium

Japanese Internment expert Eric Muller just hosted it over at his blog. The subject is Ex Parte Endo, an overshadowed sister case to the infamous Korematsu decision. Unlike Korematsu, however, Endo won her case: the government cannot indefinitely detain citizens it admits to be loyal.

Contributions were made by Jerry Kang, Patrick Gudridge, and Greg Robinson, with an introduction by Professor Muller.

It's tempting to treat the Japanese Internment as a--in the words of one conservative activist--"historical footnote". In today's climate, we must resist this temptation. Ms. Endo was subjected to much of the same stick-and-carrot treatment that allowed the Bush administration to evade review in Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi's case. She was shuffled from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to prevent her argument from being heard. She was offered an immediate release from detention if she dropped her case. To forget her story is to lose an important piece of our collective history, one which has proven all too ready to sacrifice the rights of detested minorities in pursuit of fictive security.