What were Justice Hugo Black's opinions on Executive Order 9066?

 Justice Hugo Black was a U.S. Supreme Court justice who was part of the majority in the infamous case of Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), which dealt with the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066. Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, authorized the forced relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans into internment camps.

In the Korematsu case, Justice Black wrote the opinion for the Court, upholding the legality of the internment. He asserted that the need to protect against espionage outweighed Fred Korematsu’s individual rights. Black argued that the order was not based on racial prejudice but rather on the strategic necessity during wartime. He maintained that the exclusion order was a military imperative, not driven by race hostility. However, this opinion has been widely criticized over time as a severe instance of judicial failure to protect civil liberties and constitutional rights.