Mina Juhn ’22 has won the 2022 Robert T. Matsui Annual Writing Competition for her article about Mitsuye Endo, a Japanese-American woman who was a plaintiff in a landmark trial related to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
The Matsui Writing competition was established in 2005 by the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund to encourage legal scholarship on issues of importance to the Asian Pacific American community. It is named in honor of the late U.S. Representative Robert T. Matsui, who was forced to live in an internment camp with his family in the 1940s.
Juhn’s article, which was based on a paper she wrote for the seminar course “Asian Americans and the Law” at Fordham Law, will be published in an upcoming issue of the Asian Pacific American Law Journal at UCLA and comes with a $5,000 cash prize.
“This recognition by [the Asian Pacific American Bar Association]is an honor,” said Juhn. “To be able to publish something that focuses on the story of an Asian American woman and how she was so consequential in the course of history is something I don’t take for granted.”
Korematsu v. United States (1944), Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), and Yasui v. United States (1943) are the three most well-known legal cases related to the internment of Japanese-Americans. However, Juhn argues in her article that Endo’s case, though lesser known, actually had an equally great impact. And, unlike the others, Endo’s case was actually successful.
“The more I looked into it, the more I realized there were so many complicating factors that made this case much more consequential than I think it is treated right now in the literature,” said Juhn. “It’s usually the three other petitioners, particularly Fred Korematsu, who are talked about most. But this case was heard at the same exact time as Korematsu, the decision was announced the very same day, and it effectively forced the federal government to end the entire internment program. Yet Endo’s case—even though she was successful, and the other three petitioners were not—is not talked about as much.”
Endo was in her early 20s when she was asked to be a “model petitioner” in a case that challenged the constitutionality of the Japanese internment program. Though government officials tried to compel her to drop her case in exchange for her freedom, she refused to be released early and remained imprisoned for years while the case wound its way through the courts. She eventually won her case at the Supreme Court in 1944 and the internment camps were closed shortly after.
“I ultimately argued that, for all these reasons, this case really deserves more study, and the petitioner herself, Mitsuye Endo, deserves more national recognition,” said Juhn. “The other petitioners have all received presidential medals but she has not received any sort of equal recognition on a national scale.”
This fall, Juhn will be clerking for Judge Denny Chin ’78 of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals before joining Clifford Chance as a litigation associate. Juhn says the seminar class, co-taught by Judge Chin and Professor Thomas H. Lee, was deeply impactful for her.
“Doctrinally, I think it’s very important to be able to study this line of cases that has really shaped the immigrant experience—particularly the Asian American immigrant experience—in this country,” said Juhn.
“My enrollment in the class coincided with the recent rise of anti-Asian violence. Taking the course was both academically and personally rewarding, both as a means of studying and interrogating history as an American and also as a way to seek refuge in the stories and people at the center of these cases. I was able to learn from them and draw strength from their experiences at a time when I felt it was especially needed.”