You must all be Interned : Identity Among Internees in Great Britain during World War II

Between 1933 and 1940, the United States, Great Britain and most other developed nations saw an influx of German refugees entering their borders attempting to be free of the tyranny of Hitler’s National Socialism. Many of those fleeing from Germany were intellectuals: authors, teachers, artists, or thinkers who faced persecution in their homeland. For the men, women, and children who chose the British Isles as their new home, Great Britain symbolized hope for a life free from persecution. By 1941, however, many refugees from Germany found themselves arrested and put into camps, not by the Nazis, but by their protectors, the British

Fighting terror with law? Some other genealogies of pre-emption

Within criminology and criminal law the reception of post-9/11 counter-terrorist law has generally been critical, if not hostile. The undeniable proliferation of preventive statutes has been regarded as incompatible with conventional liberal norms and as dangerously innovative in its embrace of new strategies of control. But is such law innovative, and does it threaten to leach into other areas of criminal law, as some have feared? Exploring three governmental innovations – mental health law, habitual criminal controls, and civilian internment in war-time – that developed as expressions of the liberal state’s desire to ensure the safety of its citizens in times of peace and war, the authors argue that a more historically grounded understanding of the governmental and geopolitical contexts of security provides a surer foundation on which to construct the frameworks of interpretation of contemporary counter-terrorism law

'Sedimented histories' and 'embodied legacies': Creating an evaluative framework for understanding public engagement with the First World War

This article reflects on the development of a new methodological framework for the evaluation of the impact of the Centre for Hidden Histories, one of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's First World War Engagement Centres. It shows how through evaluative processes such as academic and community partner Shared Experience Workshops, and community-focused Reflection Workshops, the historical, social, cultural and economic benefits of the centre can be highlighted. It also demonstrates how public engagement in these community history projects has resulted in the identification of new 'embodied legacies' (Facer and Enright, 2016) and heretofore marginalized 'sedimented histories' (Lloyd and Moore, 2015). These lessons in evaluation can be taken forward to inform future national commemorative moments, such as the centenary of the Second World War.This research has been conducted as part of the AHRC Centre for Hidden Histories. First at the University of Nottingham (June 2016 – September 2018), and then at the University of Derby (September 2018 – present)

Courts and the executive in wartime: A comparative study of the American and British approaches to the internment of citizens during World War II and their lessons for today

This Article compares and contrasts the legal and political treatment of the detention of citizens during World War II in Great Britain and the United States. Specifically, it explores the detentions as they unfolded, the very different positions that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill took with respect to the detention of citizens, and the manner in which British and American courts reviewed challenges brought by those detained during the war. Comparing the experiences of the two countries reveals that in both cases the courts deferred extensively to the political branches when it came to reviewing challenges to the wartime detention policies, essentially staking out roles that left them largely relegated to the sidelines of public debates over the propriety of internment policies. A comparison of the British and American experiences also reveals that, as the war continued, the two chief executives struck decidedly different positions as to the wisdom and lawfulness of detention policies directed at citizens. In the United States, Roosevelt ignored the legal advice of many of his key advisers regarding the unconstitutionality of the detention of Japanese American citizens and-again against the advice of his advisers-later delayed the closing of the internment camps until after the 1944 election. By contrast, Churchill-who operated in a different legal context that granted him greater powers than his American counterpart-came to view such policies as inconsistent with British constitutional tradition and became a crucial voice urging the termination of such detentions. The Article then attempts to understand both why the two executives charted different courses on this issue as the war unfolded and whether there are any lessons to be drawn from these events with respect to how we should think about the separation of powers during wartime today. Focusing on the British experience during the war, Churchill's change of course suggests that the executive can and sometimes will take the lead in declaring and protecting a country's constitutional values without prodding by the courts, even in wartime, and even in the absence of legal compulsion. But as is explored in the pages that follow, the British experience may be a particularly British story and more generally one that differed in significant ways from the American story. This, in turn, calls into question just how much the British experience during the war should inform debates over the separation of powers in American constitutional law. The American experience during the war, moreover, proves a cautionary tale. Specifically, it reveals a series of failings on the part of the executive branch to acknowledge and engage with the facts on the ground and honor long-accepted constitutional traditions in formulating wartime policies. This example therefore suggests that the executive branch is ill equipped to self-regulate on this score in times of war. These failings in turn call into question the common practice of courts to defer extensively to the executive on matters of national security and more generally implicate fundamental questions about the judicial role in a constitutional democracy. Although grounded in events that took place over seven decades ago, this study is undertaken for a very timely purpose. Once again, we live in a time in which the executive branch has argued that its decisions ostensibly predicated upon heightened concerns about national security should receive extensive, if not complete, deference from the Supreme Court. In addressing such arguments now and in the future, the Court would be wise to remember how judicial deference to executive branch assertions on matters of national security played out during World War II

No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience (Book Review) by Bohdan S. Kordan

Review of No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience by Bohdan S. Kordan

Korematsu and Beyond: Japanese Americans and the Origins of Strict Scrutiny

The authors examine the role that the Japanese American Citizens League played in the development of the strict scrutiny doctrine partly responsible for the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The plight of Japanese Americans during their WWII internment gave them experience in implementing this doctrine, which they passed on to the NAACP

Similar Experiences, Unique Perspectives: How Japanese American Experiences Influenced Their Participation During World War II

During World War II, Japanese Americans had to endure racist federal government policy in the form of relocation to internment camps around the country. Of the 120,000 people that were interned, a large number were citizens of the United States who protested that their 5th and 14th Amendment rights had been violated by their placement into the camps. The way Japanese Americans reacted to their experiences during the war differed depending on their experiences as Nisei or Kibei. These reactions materialized in different forms of participation in the war, usually involving the decision to serve in the military as a civic duty or whether to give up their citizenship entirely. This paper will explore how their actions shifted during the war based on their experiences of racism and their cultural backgrounds

Experiencing War as the \u27Enemy Other\u27: Italian Scottish experience in World War II (Book Review) by Wendy Ugolini

Review of Experiencing War as the \u27Enemy Other\u27: Italian Scottish experience in World War II. Wendy Ugolini. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. Pp. 288