How the Supreme Court Rewrote the Constitution

Part VII: Concentration Camps—and the End

As military police stand guard, people of Japanese descent wait at a transport center in San Francisco on April 6, 1942, for relocation to an internment center at Santa Anita racetrack near Los Angeles. They were among thousands of people forced from their homes in the name of national security following the attack on Pearl Harbor. AP Photo

Commentary

This is the last installment in a series on the nadir, or low point, of the U.S. Supreme Court. This was the period from 1937 to 1944, when the court stopped protecting the Constitution’s limits on the federal government. Our Constitution has never fully recovered.