I was reading a book about the Korematsu v. U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1944, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.
Many years later, attorneys for Korematsu used something called an “error coram nobis” petition to get a Federal judge to throw out Korematsu’s earlier conviction of violating the exclusion order.
My question for the lawyers who hang out here is: did the reversal of Korematsu’s conviction do anything about the precedent set in the Supreme Court case back in 1944 or did it just serve to clear Korematsu’s name and criminal record?
I don’t wish to start a debate on the pros and cons of Japanese relocation in WWII, but I am just interested in this specific legal aspect of it.