ABSTRACT
In the California election campaign of 1910 the Republican, Democratic and Socialist parties urged exclusion. In response to a recommendation by the governor in January, 1901, the California legislature adopted its first resolution urging Congress to protect American labor by restricting Japanese immigration. By 1913 the political situation was ripe for the passage of an anti-Japanese land law. And even prior to the 1923 alien land law decisions the courts consistently assumed that the power of the states to restrict alien land ownership, carried over from the common law, was unaffected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is operative to protect the individual, whether they are alien or citizen, against state interference with private rights. Judicial inquiry would reveal it is submitted, that the alien land law is unjust and unjustifiable legislation, and that it clearly violates rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
