Federal Judge Damon Keith of Detroit died Sunday morning at 96. Dignitaries from around Michigan weighed in to offer their respects. Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson: "It’s a sad day. Judge Damon Jerome Keith passed away earlier today, and we are all mourning the loss of this outstanding civil rights pioneer, federal judge and great friend of Wayne State. I had the honor of being sworn in as the 12th president of Wayne State University by Judge Keith, but it meant even more to me to have met the man..."

Federal judge and civil rights icon Damon Keith, who died Sunday morning at age 96, left a legacy well beyond the ground-breaking decisions he made from the bench during his career. Keith — who more than five decades on the federal bench first as a  U.S. District Court judge and later on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals — ruled in several high-profile cases during his tenure, including the desegregation of Pontiac schools, President Richard Nixon's and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell's wiretapping of student radicals in Ann Arbor and against deportation hearings held in private. While Keith may be gone, his legacy lives on. Here are the buildings and programs named in his honor: Damon J. Keith Scholarship. 

The conference “(S)exploiting the Vulnerable: Empowering Future Legal Advocates,” held April 12 at Wayne State University Law School, attracted more than 300 attendees from a variety of disciplines including, law, social work, law enforcement and non-profits. Planned and coordinated by Wayne State Assistant Professor Blanche Cook and law students Taylor Hilton, Ben VanSlyke, Lydia Mikail, Rebecca Bundy, and Elisabeth Moore, the event opened with remarks by WSU Law School Dean Richard Bierschbach about the issues of sex trafficking and how future legal advocates can make a change by bringing light to this topic. Wayne Law alumna Angela Povilatis from the Michigan Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention and Treatment Board, and Kim Trent from the WSU Board of Governors spoke about the growing world of sex trafficking and how the legal community can work to combat this practice. 

"Ours is a society that craves vulnerable flesh,” says Blanche Cook, an assistant professor at Wayne State University Law School and a leading national expert on sex-trafficking prosecutions and the commercialization and exploitation of females. Cook, previously an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice in Nashville, Tenn., specializing in large-scale drug and sex-trafficking prosecutions, is helping organize an April 12 conference, “(S)exploiting the Vulnerable: Empowering Future Legal Advocates to Combat Sex Trafficking.” “Unlike other sex trafficking conferences, Wayne Law’s conference centralizes the point of view of the survivor and uses that point of view to critique the legal process,” Cook says. Cook notes sex trafficking, that victimizes both children and adults, has reached epidemic proportions. Homeless youth, victims of discrimination or domestic violence, and asylum-seekers are frequent targets, and the Internet and substance dependency makes vulnerable people easy prey, often through force, fraud, or coercion. “Sex trafficking is omnipresent and always has been,” Cook says. “Vulnerability is the lynchpin—or epicenter—of exploitation. Geographic location is peripheral, vulnerability is key. “Large scale events like trade shows, where there is disposable cash, large crowds, and an abundance of recreational time and party-like atmosphere are often a recipe for commercialized sex disaster. Vulnerability combined with domination and control by reducing human beings to commodities to be bought and sold on an open market are the essence of commercialized sex.” 

The Levin family is one of the most powerful political dynasties in the history of Michigan — and, perhaps, the United States. Former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin is one of the longest-serving members of the Senate. Now, his nephew, Rep. Andy Levin (D-Bloomfield Twp.) is one of the newest members of Congress. Both Levins appeared on “Detroit Today” for separate conversations about the state of politics in America. Carl Levin will be a featured speaker today at an event organized by the Journal of Law in Society and the Levin Center at Wayne Law. The event — “Gerrymandering: The Power of Boundaries” — will convene national experts including Sen. Levin to talk about the practice of partisan drawings of political lines. 

In a new article titled “Antitrust As Allocator of Coordination Rights,” Wayne State University Assistant Professor of Law Sanjukta Paul explains that antitrust law allocates the right to coordinate decisions such as pricing or output across economic agents, and does so favorably for large powerful firms but unfavorably for workers’ organizations and small businesses or “micro-enterprises.” The ostensible basis to prefer coordination by large firms is promoting competition through the pursuit of efficiency. But even that basis, Paul argues, fails to explain many antitrust decisions that yield significant coordination rights to large firms while undermining competition via concentrating power. To reach parity of treatment between these varieties of coordination, Paul calls for liberalizing horizontal coordination rights beyond firm boundaries while providing mechanisms for public oversight.

Constitutional law expert Robert A. Sedler wrote an op-ed about President Donald Trump’s executive declaration. Sedler wrote: “In the months ahead, there will be a plethora of commentary about the President’s declaration of a national emergency to obtain funding for his long-promised border wall. Ultimately, the questions we examined here will be resolved within the framework of the American constitutional and judicial system.”

Thinking about going to law school in Michigan? Wayne State University is worth a look. An investigation by the USA Today Network looked into passage rates for the bar exam at U.S. law schools, including those in Michigan. The network looked at each school's share of 2015 graduates who passed the bar within two years. The data shows that of the five law schools in Michigan, Wayne State University Law School has the lowest annual tuition, $31,956, but one of the highest rates for students passing the bar — 96 percent. 

Republican lawmakers may be violating the state constitution with fast-tracked bills in the lame-luck Legislature that curb the powers of incoming Democratic officeholders or water down proposals backed by Michigan voters, legal experts say. "They're just going crazy," said Robert Sedler, a Wayne State University law professor. Sedler, who has taught at Wayne State since 1977 and wrote a book on American constitutional law, cited a range of problematic bills — from a package the Senate passed Thursday to strip enforcement of campaign finance laws from the secretary of state to one that restricts the incoming governor's choices to head the Michigan State Police, and bills that meddle with legislation and constitutional amendments backed by Michigan voters. "In the 40 years that I've been here, I have not seen any such effort to curtail the powers of the governor and the executive branch," Sedler told the Free Press Thursday.

Robert Sedler, a constitutional law professor at Wayne State University, opined about the Republican-controlled Michigan Legislature passing bills “that would amend significantly – or more accurately gut completely – the minimum wage and sick leave laws that the Legislature enacted in response to an initiative proposal just prior to the 2018 election.” Sedler continued: “In accordance with Art. II, sec. 9, the Legislature responded to the initiative petition by enacting the initiative laws without change or amendment. But at the same time, the Republican leaders stated that they were enacting these laws only to prevent the people from voting on the initiative and that after the election they would amend the laws to make them more favorable to business interests. This “bait and switch” strategy shows utter disdain for Michigan voters and for the Constitution. The plain language of the Constitution and the structure for legislative initiative that the Constitution establishes is absolutely clear. The initiative law has come from the people, not the Legislature. This being so, it is not like other laws. It is not a law that the Legislature can amend at will. Under the Constitution, once an outgoing Legislature has enacted a law in response to an initiative petition, and prevented the people from voting on the initiative, that Legislature cannot amend the initiative law in the same legislative session. Sedler concluded: “We live under a Constitution and the rule of law. The Legislature should have respected the Constitution and allowed the minimum wage and sick leave laws to take effect without change or amendment.”

When Asma Al-Khshali and her family moved from Qatar to the United States seven years ago, their application for permanent residency was initially declined. The family hired an immigration attorney — Al-Khshali’s first exposure to the legal system in the U.S. “I was very intrigued by it,” she says. “The immigration judge who ultimately granted our stay in the country changed my family’s life, and my faith in the American justice system was cemented right there and then. I wanted to contribute to the system’s legacy ever since.” She headed to Wayne Law School a year ago, following her older brother — an attorney — into the legal world. 

Sears may be days away from bankruptcy. The long-troubled retailer has reportedly started making the moves for a filing, leaving nearly 1,000 Sears and Kmart locations on the chopping block. The company is $134 million in debt and hasn't turned a profit since 2010. Laura Bartel, professor of bankruptcy law at Wayne State University, has been watching it decline as the retail industry as a whole goes under, and online shopping takes over. Over the past decade, Sears has closed a lot of stores to downsize but hasn't been able to get its finances under control. In Michigan alone, in May, consumers learned four traditional Sears stores were closing. Then in July, it was announced the Sears at Oakland Mall and eight other locations would buckle by September.

Robert Sedler, Wayne State law professor and constitutional law expert, was a guest on the Craig Fahle Show discussing the state of the U.S. Supreme Court following the addition of Justice Kavanaugh. Sedler suggested that the public should ignore the media hype and the political statements from both sides. He said the Supreme Court acts as an institution and only about a third or less of its 70 or so cases each year are constitutional cases adding that the greater part of the Court's work is interpreting and applying federal laws and deciding questions involving the workings of the federal government. 

It's hard to look at a deal announced this week between the State of Michigan and Canadian oil giant Enbridge and not feel like Gov. Rick Snyder is really rolling the dice: Gambling that aging, damaged Line 5, an oil pipeline running through the Straits of Mackinac, won't have a significant breach or rupture in the 7 to 10 years. "This is a state and a department of environmental quality that have an absolutely horrendous record of everything from technical judgement to oversight, to, frankly, fundamentally protecting people’s water and people themselves. It’s like a bad deal between the two worst actors," says Noah Hall, a professor at Wayne State University Law School and founder of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center.

Professor Peter J. Hammer, director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School, has been named the Law School’s inaugural A. Alfred Taubman Endowed Chair. Hammer, who joined the Law School faculty in 2003, is a leading voice on economic and social issues impacting Detroit and the nation. He has spent more than 25 years engaging in matters of human rights law and development in Cambodia. Hammer is an expert on domestic health law and policy, as well as international public health and economic development. The $1.5 million endowed chair is part of a $3 million gift from the late A. Alfred Taubman in 2006 that led to the construction of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights building at Wayne Law.

Distinguished Professor of Law Robert A. Sedler wrote a piece for The Conversation about the definition of treason, as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. Sedler wrote: “In the furor over the anonymous New York Times op-ed by a Trump administration “senior official,” the word “treason” has been used by a variety of people. President Trump tweeted “TREASON?” in an apparent reference to the op-ed’s author.

Noah Hall, an environmental lawyer from Wayne State University, said the changes wrought by climate alterations could require amendments to water compacts. “The Great Lakes Compact states made a rare move to address a problem before it became a problem," Hall said. "While some of these reforms can happen at the state level," Hall wrote, "or through operational changes in compact administration, more fundamental changes will require revision of existing compacts." Such changes will not come easy, he added, and “will require leadership and political will." 

A plan being considered by Republican lawmakers to short-circuit two proposals now slated for the November ballot would be a "blatant" violation of the Michigan Constitution, several legal experts say. The two legislative initiatives in question are strongly opposed by business groups. To keep them off the ballot, some lawmakers have proposed adopting the initiatives this week and then amending them during the lame-duck session after the November election. "It would defeat the purpose of the initiative process for the legislature to turn around and amend the law at the same session," Wayne State University Law Professor Robert Sedler said in an email. 

Land contracts are a popular home buying tool in Detroit where mortgages have historically been hard to come by — have little protections for buyers. "Land contracts can be so pernicious there is no filing requirement, there is just no regulation on them," explained Peter Hammer, director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School. "They can just exist in this completely private space, and almost no accountability for them." 

Robert Sedler, professor of law and constitutional law expert, was a guest on the Craig Fahle show discussing recent Michigan Supreme Court decisions. Sedler said that Michigan school districts can ban the open carry of weapons on school property. Michigan law prohibits holders of concealed pistol permits from carrying them on school property except that parents picking up or dropping off children may have the pistol in the car. The Court held that Michigan law prohibiting units of local government - defined as city, village, township or county - from enacting gun regulation did not include school districts. Also discussed was the upcoming decision from the Michigan Supreme Court in a challenge to the ballot proposal for a redistricting commission. The challengers contend that it is a general revision of the constitution, which can only be done by a convention. The Court of Appeals unanimously held that it is a constitutional amendment and not a general revision. Sedler said that the decision is clearly correct, because the amendment only deals with one topic, redistricting, and does not change the form of government.