Supreme Court Justice Scalia Warns of U.S. Internment Camps

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Supreme Court Justice Scalia Warns of U.S. Internment Camps
by Alex Newman February 6, 2014
Supreme Court Justice Scalia Warns of U.S. Internment Camps

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (shown) made headlines nationwide this week after bluntly telling law students at the University of Hawaii that internment camps to detain Americans would eventually return. Acknowledging that the infamous Supreme Court-approved internment of Japanese-Americans in wretched camps during World War II was wrong, the conservative-leaning justice followed up by adding that “you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again.” In “times of war,” Scalia said, citing a Latin expression attributed to Cicero, “the laws fall silent.”

According to the Associated Press, which first reported the explosive February 3 statements, Scalia was responding to a question about one of the Supreme Court’s most widely criticized decisions. Amid national hysteria following the Japanese regime’s attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an “executive order” in 1942 purporting to justify the mass detention of people of Japanese ancestry — the vast majority of whom were U.S. citizens. In 1944, the high court upheld the convictions of two men for failing to report to an internment camp in Korematsu v. United States.



“Well of course Korematsu was wrong. And I think we have repudiated in a later case,” Scalia was quoted as telling students and faculty during a lunchtime question and answer session. “But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again.” Pointing to the Latin expression about laws falling silent during war-time, the longest-serving justice said, “That’s what was going on — the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot.”

“That’s what happens,” Scalia continued. “It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It’s no justification, but it is the reality.” In other words, one of the nation’s top judicial officials believes that during a “time of war,” Americans run the risk of being unconstitutionally rounded up by the federal government and detained in camps like over 110,000 almost certainly innocent Japanese-descent individuals during World War II.

Keep in mind that the U.S. government is currently engaged in multiple unconstitutional wars, including many that could potentially go on indefinitely — especially the “terror” war, which now spans across the “Homeland” and the entire planet. Incredibly, buried inside the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Congress and the president have even approved a statute pretending to legalize the indefinite detention of Americans without charges, trial, due process, or any other constitutionally guaranteed rights.