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In 1942, when he was 22 years old, Fred Korematsu—working as a welder in a California shipyard—had refused to be put into an internment camp. He was arrested and locked up. It was that conviction that the Supreme Court upheld in the 1944 Korematsu v. United States case, deciding that in wartime, the government could indeed put him away without a hearing and without any judicial determination that he had done anything wrong. It is this king-like authority that George W. Bush now claims over those he designates as "enemy combatants."

It wasn't until 1983 that San Francisco Federal District Judge Marilyn Patel overturned that 1944 Korematsu conviction. Among the lawyers filing that successful 1983 appeal were some whose parents had also been imprisoned in those internment camps.

Now, at the age of 84, Fred Korematsu continues to protest against a president, George W. Bush, who also holds both American citizens and noncitizens in legal black holes without the most basic civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

Korematsu has authorized an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States, in his name, on behalf of American citizen Yaser Hamdi, designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush and held for two years in an American navy brig without guaranteed Sixth Amendment access to a lawyer, and without any prospect of a trial at which he can defend himself. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld maintains that Hamdi can be held in this legal black hole for "the duration of hostilities," and that could take generations.

Fred Korematsu's message to the Supreme Court is also on behalf of non-American citizens imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay—Khaled A.F. Al Odah et al. and Shafiq Rasul et al.

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"The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether the Constitution forbids the Bush administration from holding U.S. citizens indefinitely and without access to lawyers or courts when they are suspected of being “enemy combatants.”

The justices will consider the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen, former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam who was arrested in his home city after a trip to Pakistan. The government alleges he was part of a plot to detonate a radiological “dirty bomb” in the United States."

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Separately, the court will hear a challenge this spring from foreign-born terror suspects held in open-ended custody at the military's prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That case asks whether those more than 650 prisoners may challenge their detention and treatment in U.S. courts.

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