“The law knows no finer hour than when it cuts through formal concepts and transitory emotions to protect unpopular citizens against discrimination and persecution.” On behalf of another group of “unpopular citizens,” he referred to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II as the “legalization of racism” in his dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States. The first justice to ever use the word racism in a Supreme Court opinion, he went on to employ it seven more times before it disappeared from court opinions for two decades.
