Rostow’s criticism of Korematsu v. United States has become the common wisdom. Indeed, it has been generalized into an observation about the typical response of the U.S. government to perceived national security needs in wartime. The Latin phrase, inter arma silent leges, which literally means that in times of war law is silent. Professor Tushnet, who graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law. His research includes studies examining (skeptically) the practice of judicial review in the United States and around the world. He also writes in the area of legal and particularly constitutional history, with works on the development of civil rights law in the United States and (currently) a long-term project on the history of the Supreme Court in the 1930s.

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