The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 looked like a bill doomed to fail; it was proposed by, and sought for the benefit of a small racial minority with little political power, under a fiscally conservative Republican administration. No such apology had ever been given to African-Americans or Native-Americans for the injustices suffered. Why, then, did it pass? A content analysis method of the floor debates is used to identify several central themes, three theories are applied in an attempt to explain the bill's passage. A pluralist model of lawmaking is appealing because of the agency it affords to Japanese-Americans in the bill's passage, yet naively ignores the obvious structural racism that persists in America. Elite theory addresses this inequality, but to the detriment of Japanese-Americans by robbing them of any influence they exerted in the legislative process. Structural contradiction theory is ultimately most satisfying when improved by the inclusion of an institutional production model. This theory provides a more nuanced and less deterministic theory, while allowing for minority group agency in a singular instance. Through this model we can understand the skillful manner in which Japanese-American interest groups seized the favorable "cultural context" of a country yearning for an affirmation of justice, liberty, and equality. They dexterously framed the Civil Liberties Act as one that would fulfill this need, depicting it as a bill for the common good. This case study is illustrative of the manner in which a historically powerless racial minority could momentarily wield great political power by obscuring their own voice and aligning their own interests with those of the collective.