that little reasoning was there in plessy. i did not see that mention in briefs. it is possible i missed it, but it is hard to imagine these justices, especially douglas and -- it has to remain out there as a possibility. it is part of the history and the culture and the rationale of segregation comes back to washington -- and it comes back to washington. >> university of maryland, baltimore county, historian. they could attend white schools. they could also live outside of chinatown, but it was hard. my question is about the two major fields. d.c. history, civil rights history. i got the implication on the way in there was a major intervention in those two fields. it seems like the interventions i thought were going to be there did not happen. this case did influence brown. it is a slamdunk case, right? --is also a simple eisenhower wants to put down a marker. i am curious how it changes the story we are already telling about the city and civil rights. the city remains pretty well segregated. in all the ways that matter. housing, jobs, and how the city is run thr

plessy. brown. parks. for that distinguished list, today we add the name of fred korematsu. [applause] susan: karen, what was the path from the supreme court to the president of the united states giving him the medal of freedom? tell us the story. karen: he was able to leave the topaz concentration camp to pursue a job opportunity. first, he went to salt lake city. he almost died of there of pneumonia. that is when he met and married my mother. they could not get married in south carolina, where she was from. they got married in detroit. susan: interracial marriage? karen: yes. susan: what about the legal side of the case? what happened? peter: this is one of the great experiences you never anticipate. back in 1981, i decided to write a book about these cases, an academic book, really. you have a copy of it, it is called "justice of war." in the research for the book, i learned about these cases in law school in my constitutional law class. we read them. everybody agreed these were terrible cases, terrible decisions. my question was how could this happen, with all these libe

there were a lot of concerns about how to actually deal with plessy. justice jackson and justice frankfurter were concerned about how to justify the decision to overrule it. >> they become manifest in the first conference over brown. they say that colleagues don't respect him. he at one point threatened to punch him in the nose. it was a harvard professor who was always condescending to him and treating him like a true poker buddy and didn't respect him. the initial vote is something like four votes to straight down segregation, three votes and two that seemed undecided. they don't like segregation but they don't think the court should be stepping in. the initial vote is taken and it looks like the segregation is going to win. all of a sudden he drops dead and has a heart attack. on the way home from the funeral he says this is the first indication i've ever had that there is a god. then the court re- argues the case. first i want to get to the attorneys on the docket. it included john davis who has been in three cases. he was in unsuccessful candidate

i don't often agree with his opinions, but he said, korematsu ranks with dred scott and plessy versus ferguson as the three worst decisions ever in the supreme court. the question of whether this can happen again -- unfortunately, the court has not ever overturned or had the occasion to overturn the korematsu decision. so, technically, it stays on the books. as i quoted justice jackson, and lies around like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority with a plausible reason. we may say, of course this is not going to happen again, we are a much more decent, tolerant society today. but, to think that history can never repeat itself is really -- to think that history can never repeated itself is really not something we should do. susan: on twitter, john young wants to know, how did the authorities different that -- those of japanese dissent from those from the chinese? karen: a very good question. at the time, the chinese developed these little buttons, like lapel buttons that they wore and it said "i am chinese." so that they would not be confused with the japanese and japanes

plessy versus ferguson overruled in brown v. board and many others.so the court, it is appropriate that the court overruled precedent in certain circumstances. it's also appropriate in my view of the court has said many times they be the starting point. you can't reinvent the wheel necessarily every time you confront an issue. the hard question is when is it appropriate and when is it not? i would love to have a perfect answer, setting the rules of the road in advance, which is a general thing i think about and everything related to jurisprudence. i think it's really hard to have a set formula for overruling that's going to work in all cases. when it's really wrong and has really significant practical effects and there hasn't been reliant entrance of the conduit had with the property or contract decision, that seems to be a descriptive of when the court will overrule something. it is not a formula that tells you in advance which a visit to find strike, when to do it and went to now? not really. that's when it happened. really wrong and really signific