Even though the World War II Japanese-American internment was “wrong,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia proclaimed in 2014 during a visit to the William S. Richardson School of Law, “you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again.”

Justice Scalia envisioned a politically driven mass exclusion or segregation of Muslims in America. Noting that “in times of war, the laws fall silent,” he also intimated that, when challenged, the government would rely upon the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1944 Korematsu decision as discredited but still-standing precedent for the forced removal and possible incarceration of an ethnic or religious group.

Justice Scalia’s remarks presciently channeled the political climate that developed in late 2015. Republican presidential electioneering upped the ante: Candidates called for total exclusion of Muslims at the borders, broad surveillance and “sequester” within the United States, and even torture of Muslim terror suspects.

Harassment, discrimination and intimidation intensified. Several policymakers invoked the internment — and by implication Korematsu — as legal justification for sweeping government security restrictions targeting both immigrants and citizens. And President Donald Trump’s controversial January 2017 Muslim exclusion orders are transforming campaign rhetoric into political reality — with people’s lives and families at stake.

A few discussion points and context:

>> The court cases: The military necessity pillars of the 1944 Supreme Court Korematsu decision, which legalized the mass incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, have been undercut by the 1980s Korematsu, Hirabayashi and Yasui coram nobis reopenings. The coram nobis cases showed no bona fide national security justification. They also demonstrated egregious government fraud on the court and the American populace in attempting to legally justify the internment. Congress followed with the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, apologizing and conferring reparations.

Although discredited by judges and scholars, the original Supreme Court Korematsu decision has yet to be overruled in subsequent cases by the Supreme Court. And some politicians and prominent judges maintain, “Korematsu was correctly decided.” Indeed, the Justice Department, in defending the current executive order, asserted Korematsu’s principle (without citing the case) that when the government asserts national security, the courts should acquiesce, even when government has not shown “pressing public necessity” and even when constitutional liberties are denied.

>> The challenge: This dissonance about the continuing significance of Korematsu raises pressing present-day questions for a constitutional democracy committed to both security and the rule of law.

What will happen when those profiled, detained, harassed or discriminated against in the name of national security turn to the courts for legal protection? How will the U.S. courts respond to the need to both promote security and protect fundamental democratic values of our political process — that people are to be treated fairly and equally?

We have some insight based on recent court rulings, including the 9th Circuit’s refusal to lift the lower court’s ban on enforcement of the exclusion and removal executive order. But final determinations, ultimately by the Supreme Court, with its currently vacant ninth seat, are uncertain. At stake are both the lives and families of those targeted and the tenor of American society itself.

>> The insights: Perhaps we can draw dual insights from these challenging times. The first is the seriousness of terror threats: officials need to respond swiftly in apprehending perpetrators and rationally in taking grounded pro-active steps to prevent future violence. The second is the simultaneous importance of preventing politically driven government overreactions that scapegoat and harshly treat entire groups without solid grounding in actual “pressing public necessity.”

Eric K. Yamamoto is the Fred T. Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.