Professor Jenny Martinez discusses whether Donald Trumps proposal to ban Muslims from the United States is even constitutional in this NBC News interview. 

Donald Trump proposed a system of religious discrimination for U.S. immigration policy on Monday, advocating a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” according to a written campaign statement.

The incendiary proposal was swiftly denounced by Trump’s rivals in both parties, and as a policy proposal it is probably illegal.

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Assessing Trump’s plan, Stanford Law professor Jenny Martinez said “Excluding all people of a particular religion from entering the country on the sole basis of their religion would, in my view, clearly violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.”

Martinez, an expert in international law, added that the only legal support for such an approach comes in older, discredited cases. “To the extent there are precedents for this kind of blanket discrimination,” she told MSNBC, “they are ones, like the Japanese internment camps upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu, which all reasonable constitutional experts consider tragic mistakes that we should not repeat.”