Race, Rights, and National Security: Law and the Japanese American Incarceration, Third Edition

Eric Yamamoto

Eric K. Yamamoto is an award-winning, internationally-recognized law professor at the University of Hawai'i William S. Richardson School of Law. He is known for his legal work and scholarship on racial justice, with an emphasis on redress for historic injustice. He also specializes in civil procedure and complex litigation. For his teaching, mentoring, scholarship and justice work, in April 2012, he was appointed to a prestigious new professorship: The Fred T. Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice.

Professor Yamamoto has received eight outstanding law teaching awards, including the University of Hawai'i's highest award the 2005 Regents Medal for Teaching Excellence and the Society of American Law Teachers' nation-wide award as Outstanding Law Teacher for 2006. In 2012 the Consortium of Asian Pacific American Law Professors established the annual &"Professor Eric Yamamoto Emerging Scholar Award” to be bestowed each year upon a most promising legal scholar. Professor Yamamoto has also received awards for his work on civil rights and social justice -- most recently the 2009 American Board of Trial Lawyers &"Ha`heo” Award (outstanding community law service); the 2008 &"American Courage Award” from the Asian American Justice Center (civil rights consortium); the Equal Justice Society's 2007 inaugural &"Scholar Advocate Award;” the Japanese American Citizens League - Honolulu's 2006 &"Distinguished Public Service Award” (with Chris Iijima); and the 2004 Consumer Lawyers &"Patsy Mink Social Justice Award.”

In 1984 Professor Yamamoto served as coram nobis co-counsel to Fred Korematsu in the successful reopening the infamous WWII Japanese American internment case, Korematsu v. U.S. (contributing to congressional reparations). He worked on the legal teams for Filipino American Manuel Fragante in his accent discrimination appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (Fragante v. City) and for Native Hawaiian Alice Aiwohi in her successful Homelands breach of trust class action resulting in a major state reparations settlement (Ka`ai`ai v. Drake). He also served as procedure consultant on the African American reparations case Alexander v. Oklahoma and the Philippines political torture class action In re Marcos Litigation. His legal work also includes authorship of amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, including Office of Hawaiian Affairs v. HCDCH (Hawaiian lands), Grutter v. Michigan (affirmative action) and Rasul v. Bush (post-9/11 Guantanamo Bay mass detention), as well as briefs to the Ninth Circuit in Korab v. Hawai`i (Micronesian healthcare) and Doe v. Kamehameha (Native Hawaiian education).

Professor Yamamoto has published two books and over seventy book chapters and law review articles. His first book on Interracial Justice (conflict and reconciliation among racial communities) received the Gustavus Meyers Award for Outstanding Books on Social Justice for 2000. His second book, Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment (2nd ed. in progress), co-authored with Chon, Izumi, Kang and Wu, received national attention in light of its relevance to the post-September 11th tension between national security and civil liberties in America.

Margaret Chon

Since joining the Seattle University faculty in 1996, Margaret Chon has been a dedicated scholar and teacher of intellectual property and critical theory. She is currently the Donald & Lynda Horowitz Professor for the Pursuit of Justice, and formerly Associate Dean for Research. Her current scholarship explores the global governance dimensions of intellectual property, especially their distributional consequences. During the 2011-12 year, she was the Senior Global Emile Noël Research Fellow in the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice at New York University School of Law.

Following graduation from law school in 1986, Chon worked for a year as a staff attorney at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She then clerked for the Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., and practiced intellectual property law with Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis in Philadelphia. Immediately prior to her first academic appointment, she served in an administrative clerkship with Chief Judge Dolores K. Sloviter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where she assisted in the revision of the local Third Circuit rules. Throughout her professional career, she has been and continues to be active in various community and professional organizations.

Lorraine Bannai

Lorraine Bannai is Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality and a Professor of Lawyering Skills at Seattle University School of Law. After earning her J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law, Professor Bannai practiced with what is now the San Francisco firm of Minami Tamaki. While in practice, she was on the legal team that successfully challenged Fred Korematsu’s conviction for violating military orders removing Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II. She has written and spoken widely on the issue of the wartime incarceration, including testimony before United States Senate Judiciary Committee and presentations before numerous academic and civic institutions such as the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, the Japanese American National Museum, and the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. Her recent writing includes a biography of Fred Korematsu, Enduring Conviction: Fred Korematsu and His Quest for Justice, published by the University of Washington