Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin appeared to support the protection of the legendary Supreme Court decision that upheld the detention of more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans during World War II while trying to catch President Donald Trump’s lawyer general candidate in a “gotcha” time.
Tell me about the situation you think prevented an national from obeying a court order, Durbin told solicitor general candidate Dean John Sauer. ” As terrible as it was, that court order was followed for ages, was it not”?
In Korematsu v. U. S., the Supreme Court upheld the incarceration of 120, 000 Chinese citizens during WWII. Sauer said the order “has now been, I think, correctly repudiated by virtually everyone” . ,
” I only wonder whether some scholars does think we’d be better off if it hadn’t been followed”, Sauer said.
Durbin made the comment while questioning Sauer in his first assurance reading on February 26. He is also running against Aaron Reitz and Harmeet Dhillon, both of whom are running for assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy. Sauer will take over prosecution for the United States at the Supreme Court if he is chosen as counsel standard.
The discussion began when Durbin asked Reitz if he stood by a blog on X so that representatives could occasionally get actions against court purchases. Reitz referred to Article Three as” a liberal view of the role of judges and their ability to bind events to the situation before it” in a statement.
Sauer therefore contacted Durbin to ask his opinion. Sauer said he did not want to speak to “hypotheticals”, but “generally, if there’s a direct court order that binds a federal or state standard, they should pursue it” . ,
Durbin asked for exceptions, so Sauer suggested the infamous decisions of Dred Scott v. Sandford ( which held free descendants of slaves cannot be citizens ) and Korematsu v. U. S. ( which upheld the Japanese internment as a “military necessity” ).
The idea that leaders may ignore the Korematsu decision was later refuted by Durbin. He said,” I want to get into it because I believe it will be at the heart of the future constitutional challenge we will face as a country.”  ,
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley slammed Durbin for obviously defending Korematsu, which the Supreme Court rebuked as “gravely bad” and with” no place in legislation under the Constitution” in 2018.  ,
” I thought it sounded to me like my companion, Sen. Durbin, was defending the Korematsu determination, which I think is one of the worst and most horrible choices in the background of the United States”, Hawley said. If officials who disagree with a socially wrongdoing choice simply blindly following it, or do they record their disagreements when they do so — Korematsu, Dred Scott, we may go down the line?
Sauer said he” strongly agree]d ]” with Hawley’s reaction. He added that he cited historic examples to demonstrate that “it’s difficult to make a very cover, sweeping statement about something without being presented with the information and the rules that applied in that particular scenario.”
Sauer is no man to high-stakes administrative concerns. He served as Missouri’s solicitor general for six years starting in 2017. He represented defendants who filed a lawsuit against the federal government’s repression advanced in Missouri v. Biden and filed an election integrity short on behalf of Missouri and 16 other state at the Supreme Court in 2020.
Reitz agreed with Sauer’s claim that making broad claims without understanding the details of a legal matter is challenging.  ,
” There is no hard and fast rule about whether, in some, in every instance, a common standard is bound by a jury choice”, Reitz added. There are some situations where a person may become legally bound, and others where they may not.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which mandated law enforcement to gain suspected escaped slaves yet in free states, was an example of when courts resigned more than enact a ethically repugnant legislation, according to Hawley. He claimed that if more of them had done so, the United States may be a better position.
“ I can’t believe that anyone on this committee believes that in response to choices like Korematsu, Dred Scott, and the Fugitive Slave Act, we should just grin and bear it,” said one member of the committee. Don’t say something, enforce the law,'” Hawley said. “ For heaven’s sake. I mean, great sky”.
The team contributor for election integrity is Logan Washburn. He is a The College Fix flower 2025 fellow. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s journal associate, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan grew up in rural Michigan but is originally from Central Oregon.
