Friday round-up

By Kiera Flynn
on Jul 22, 2011 at 10:40 am

This week a Michigan state court relied on this Term’s decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes to decline to recertify a class of over two thousand plaintiffs in an environmental mass tort alleging that the release of toxins by Dow Chemical contaminated a twenty-two-mile stretch of flood plain.  Law.com, Michigan’s Midland Daily News, and the Michigan Messenger all have coverage.  As for the future of the Wal-Mart v. Dukes ruling itself, today lawyers will be back in federal district court arguing that the plaintiffs’ claims should be allowed to move forward as several smaller class actions.  The Chicago Tribune and Reuters have coverage.

Writing at the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Steven Schwinn compares the Court’s 2008 decision in Crawford v. Marion County (upholding Indiana’s voter identification law) and its recent decision in Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett.  He concludes that “the Court’s approach in these two cases seems at odds, to say the least–and puts a heavy thumb on the political scale in favor of those with resources (and against those without).”