Executive Order 9066 In World War II, Executive Order 9066 suspended basic rights of Japanese Americans - even people whose loyalty to the United States was never questioned, though the government feared the group as a whole might contain some spies - and led to a lot of people (>100K) being rounded up and kept at internment camps. Korematsu v. United States ruled this was constitutional. Today, in the "War on Terror," at least one politician can make surprisingly strong statements about plans for negative treatment against large groups of people (e.g. Muslims) because of concerns that a small minority of them might be radical enough to kill a bunch of people, and [the politician can] remain surprisingly popular. What, if any, modern-day obstacles are in place that would nullify the same or materially same executive order? This link indicates: "The Court would then have to adhere to, reconcile with, or overrule Korematsu &amp; Hirabayashi." However, it does not state that there this is the only obstacle and hence the question
The main obstacle is that Korematsu is almost universally considered to have been wrongly decided. It is considered "anti-canon". Greene, The Anticanon, 125 Harv. L. Rev. 379 (2011) Justice Scalia said that the ruling was wrong. Justice Ginsberg wrote, "A Korematsu-type classification…will never again survive scrutiny." Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200 (1995), (GINSBURG, J., dissenting) Justice Alito has said, "We have, at times, overreacted in response to perceived characteristics of groups thought to be dangerous to our security or way of life and condemned individuals based on group membership." Fraise v. Terhune, 283 F.3d 506 (3d Cir. 2002) Chief Justice Roberts was asked about this during his confirmation hearing: Senator FEINGOLD. [...] Do you believe that Korematsu was wrongly decided? Judge ROBERTS. It’s one of those cases that I don’t think it’s technically been overruled yet, but I think it’s widely recognized as not having precedential value. I do think the result in that case— Korematsu was actually the—considered the exclusion and not the actual detention, but the exclusion of individuals based on their ethnic/racial background from vast areas. It’s hard for me to comprehend the argument that that would be acceptable these days. Senator FEINGOLD. It is often included, if you list decisions that are sort of considered some of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court— Judge ROBERTS. Yes. To a similar question during her confirmation, Justice Sotomayor said, "It is inconceivable to me today that a decision permitting the detention, arrest of an individual solely on the basis of their race would be considered appropriate by our government." Justice Breyer wrote in his book, Making Our Democracy Work, "The decision has been so thoroughly discredited that it is hard to conceive of any future court referring to it favorably or relying on it." During her confirmation hearing, Justice Kagan was asked for examples of cases that were poorly reasoned. She listed only one: Korematsu. Thus, the main obstacle to such a law is that the judiciary seems to be almost universally convinced that Korematsu was decided incorrectly. However, Justice Scalia cautioned that these sentiments might be put aside again in times of war: "In times of war, the laws fall silent. [...] That’s what happens. It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again — in time of war. It’s no justification but it is the reality." An alternative view, somewhat in line with Justice Scalia's outlook, is offered by Justice Jackson in his dissent in Korematsu. He recognizes that the courts might be pressed again to defer to military decision-making ("I would not lead people to rely on this Court for a review that seems to me wholly delusive") and proposes that the chief constraint against this unconstitutional action is the executive's "responsibility to the political judgments of their contemporaries and to the moral judgments of history." I take that to stand for the principle that it is up to the people to make it clear that such an order is unacceptable.
The ability to create such an office derives (according to Roosevelt, who invoked the power), from the constitutional authority of the president and the Trading with the Enemy Act amended by the War Powers Act, 1941. A president cannot repeal a part of The Constitution or an act of Congress, but he can undo an act by a president (as long as Congress hasn't come along and taken back a power for example by changing the "authorized" part to "required"). In a sense, that office is permanently gone, but until Congress or SCOTUS change the law, another president could effectively re-create that office and even give it the same name. The appendix to Title 50 which authorized the office is still there (not repealed). It is remotely possible that some other act or court ruling effectively nullifies this part of the law, but that would have to be determined by some president attempting to re-create the office and then someone else suing to prevent it (based on such an effectively nullification).
The situations cannot reasonably be compared legally. In Wynn v. Vilsack, a motion for preliminary injunction was granted (and the program was not ruled unconstitutional). In the ruling, the court found that the evidence &quot;does not support a finding that USDA continues to be a participant, passive or active, in discrimination&quot;, and does find that there were past successful remediation efforts, thus &quot;the Court expresses serious concerns over whether the Government will be able to establish a strong basis in evidence warranting the implementation of Section 1005's race-based remedial action&quot;, moreover &quot;Plaintiff has convincingly shown that the relief provided by Section 1005 is not narrowly tailored to serve that interest&quot;. The court finds that there is a good-enough case that the law fails strict scrutiny. Incidentally, Congress repealed that law. On the other hand, in Evanston, we have no facts or concrete legal allegations (e.g. drafts of a legal complaint). The cited memorandum is a recommendation, not a law. There does exist at least one available council action from 2019 which says that The Chief Financial Officer is hereby authorized to divert all adult use cannabis funds received by the Illinois Department of Revenue for sales of adult use cannabis to a separate fund in a City account for local reparations. SECTION 3: The City may receive donations to this fund from separate organizations, corporations, and individuals established herein by the City Council. The city also has a page referring to Ordinance 102-O-20 (not available) indicating that &quot;The Committee will work with residents, City staff and experts to explore and identify programs and opportunities to be supported by the Reparations Fund&quot;. The Program Guidelines §3 indicates that a person may be eligible for money if they are an ancestor, direct descendant, or &quot;other&quot; who has suffered from a &quot;City ordinance, policy, or procedure that served to discriminate against the Applicant in the area of housing&quot;. It thus does not exclude Asian and Hispanic homeowners, LGBTQIA2S+, Catholic, Muslims or anyone else, except insofar as a Catholic was not demonstrably the victim of such discrimination. The city also provides an extensive historical study of past government discrimination in housing. You may be able to eke out more concrete information on what they have done here, at the reparations committee website. In terms of potential differentia between the USDA program and the Evanston program, the most obvious difference would be in terms of prior remediation efforts. If you sue Evanston for their program, they could defend the program as providing the remediation that justifies the program – which had already been provided in the USDA program.
In fact, the immigration quotas do not discriminate. The described limit is that "No more than 7 percent of the visas may be issued to natives of any one independent country in a fiscal year; no more than 2 percent may issued to any one dependency of any independent country". All countries get the same upper limit. Additionally, anti-discrimination laws are subject matter specific: they exist because Congress passed a law that prohibits using race as a basis for employing a person (which Congress can do because of the Commerce Clause). Congress has not passed any such law pertaining to granting of visas. There is a path of reasoning that could lead to concluding that national quotas violate anti-discrimination laws, based on an "effects test" (disparate impact). It appears to be a fact that an applicant for a visa has a much higher probability of being denied a visa is their country of origin is China or India, as opposed to Sweden, which one could spin into a disparate impact argument. In order for this argument to become the law, there would have to be a case brought to the federal courts to the effect that national quotas are illegal, and as far as I know there has never been such a case. There are no provisions in anti-discrimination legislation that support a disparate impact doctrine in immigration, and pretty clear evidence that it was not congressionally intended since Title 8 Ch. 12 clearly calls for nation-based quotas. A final point: "national origin discrimination" is based on "an individual's, or his or her ancestor's, place of origin; or because an individual has the physical, cultural or linguistic characteristics of a national origin group". A Swedish citizen of "Chinese national origin" is subject to the Swedish quota, not the Chinese quota, thus the discrimination is based on country of citizenship, not national origin.
One can argue both ways. On one side, yes, zero representation in the Senate for all states is equal suffrage in the Senate. On the other side, no, depriving all states of all representation in the Senate deprives them of their suffrage in the Senate (without needing to consider the question of whether the suffrage is equal). Since this question has never been considered by a court, we can't do much more than speculate how one might rule. There has never been an amendment proposed to modify the composition of the Senate -- at least not one that was seriously considered. The spirit of the law works in favor of the second interpretation. Furthermore, a strict application of abstract logical reasoning was probably not the intention of the framers. A strategy that might seem more likely to succeed would be to introduce amendments reducing the Senate's power in the legislative process, similar to the evolution of the House of Lords in the UK. If the goal were to sideline one state, this might work, but if the goal is to address the complaint that the Senate is undemocratic because people in smaller states have proportionally more influence there, there's no way the amendment would pass 3/4 of the states' legislatures. The number of states with one or two representatives is 13, by itself a sufficient number to block the adoption of an amendment.
Both Congress and the state legislatures are expressly forbidden by the Constitution from passing bills of attainder. That means neither can ever pass a law that names an individual and says "they are suspended." It is so important that it's one of the very few restrictions on government that the original Constitution (before any amendments) prohibited in bot state and federal governments. (Also, a "bill" is not a law. It's what a legislature is considering making a law.)
You have misread the DMLP page. In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to record a conversation if you are a party and if the other party does not consent. The fact that federal law doesn't ban something doesn't mean that states can't ban it. There is generally a presumption that when both the feds and the states can legitimately regulate something, the feds weren't trying to preempt all state laws on the topic. While people often say "federal law takes precedence over state law," the normal rule is that both laws apply; the federal law only blocks the state law if the feds wanted to block said state laws. So far as I can tell, the federal law has never been held to preempt two-party consent laws; the point of the federal law was to restrict recording, not extend it. It's like how federal law doesn't prohibit taking hostages inside the US to coerce a private company into doing what you want (anti-terrorism laws might, I guess, but the federal hostage-taking law doesn't); while the federal law excludes most hostage-taking in the US, that doesn't mean that it's legal to take hostages. Congress sometimes wants to establish nationwide standards for something, but the presumption is that they didn't.
Strictly speaking, that principle isn't even true everywhere in the US. The maxim "nulla poena sine lege" (i.e. "no punishment without a prior penal statute") was historically applicable to civil law systems, such as are found in continental Europe. In common-law systems, there was never a tradition in which a crime wasn't a crime unless it violated a penal law, because crimes themselves were traditionally defined by court precedent instead of by statute. In US federal court, the only allowable common-law offense is contempt of court. This is due to a court decision (United States v. Hudson), in which the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts do not have the constitutional authority to hear a case in which someone is accused of committing a common-law crime. Even so, and even though there is a federal contempt statute, the Supreme Court has ruled that contempt is an inherent power of any court, and statutes around it only regulate the power (but the power would be there even without a statute). At the state level, some states have explicitly passed laws saying something is not a crime if it doesn't violate the penal code (although this doesn't necessarily apply to contempt); see section 6 of the California Penal Code for an example. In other states, like Florida, common-law crimes still exist; Florida has a statute saying that any common-law offense is still a crime unless a statute has explicitly covered that same subject matter (section 775.01), and specifies a generic penalty for anything which is an offense at common law and not addressed by any Florida penal statute (section 775.02). While this is sort of statutory (as it's a statute giving the penal provision), it's also basically not (as no statute has to say "X is illegal," because it's enough that English common law makes X illegal).