US Ecology, an Idaho-based company, is close to receiving approval for a large expansion of its hazardous waste facility on Detroit’s east side, near Hamtramck. The expansion would increase the facility’s storage capacity nine-fold, from 76,000 to 677,000 gallons. Despite the facility’s spotty history, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) is completing its approval of US Ecology’s proposed expansion. Noah Hall, founder of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center (GLELC) and professor of law at Wayne State University, is a sharp critic of MDEQ. He said the agency often gives polluters a free pass in Michigan, especially “in disenfranchised communities and in populations that our political system hasn’t cared much about.”

A former labor official told federal prosecutors that United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams directed subordinates to use funds from Detroit’s automakers, funneled through training centers, to pay for union travel, meals and entertainment. Money filtered through the training centers for the benefit of UAW officials is at the center of a widening scandal that has led to seven convictions, a shakeup at the highest levels of the auto industry and raised questions about the sanctity of labor negotiations between the union and Detroit's automakers. "Maybe this is what the senior levels of the UAW were used to, but at its core, this is a significant betrayal of trust," said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor. "This is how a small fraud becomes a much bigger one."

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is hoping for clemency from President Donald Trump, but he might need friends in high places to plead his case directly with the White House. The 48-year-old Democrat has filed a petition for commutation — a reduction of his sentence — but he doesn't appear to meet the Justice Department's standards for considering clemency. Kilpatrick isn’t eligible for a pardon under the department’s guidelines because he’s still serving a prison sentence. In 2016, nearly 29,000 people signed a Change.org petition asking President Barack Obama to grant clemency to Kilpatrick, arguing that while Kilpatrick was “wrong,” 28 years in prison is "excessive." “Certainly, a 28-year sentence is among the longest given for a public corruption case ever. That’s the basis for a claim of unfairness. Whether that resonates is a different question,” said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University and a former federal prosecutor. “I think you can make an argument that he’s received a substantial punishment so far, but whether that results in a reduction in his sentence is very much an open question.” Henning added: “I suspect the local U.S. Attorney’s Office would not look upon it favorably on a pardon or clemency, but that doesn’t preclude it from happening.”

Abortion is re-emerging as a wedge issue in Michigan’s gubernatorial election amid speculation over the fate of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that invalidated broad state laws that criminalized abortion. Democrat hopefuls say they would fight for a woman’s right to choose a legal abortion if federal safeguards are overturned. Republican candidates say they would defend an old state law that would again make it a crime. Experts who say the ban would again take effect if Roe v Wade is overturned point to a Michigan Supreme Court decision in 1973. Justices blocked the enforcement of the state law against physicians but did not repeal it. The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in 1997 that there is no right to abortion under the state Constitution. Robert Sedler, a professor of law and constitutional expert at Wayne State University, agreed that if Roe were overturned, “as of that moment abortion would be illegal in Michigan.” But Sedler said he cannot imagine the high court, no matter its makeup, overturning Roe. “It would be cataclysmic,” he said. “The criteria for overturning is it has to be undercut by later decisions, and there can’t have been societal reliance on that decision.”

A Dearborn man captured on an Islamic State battlefield this month was tricked by fellow Muslims into traveling overseas and became trapped in war-torn Syria, his brother said Friday. Relatives, public records and legal experts helped establish a narrative timeline of Ibraheem Musaibli's final months in the United States, his alleged attempts to escape an Islamic State prison with help from the FBI and potential prosecution in a high-profile criminal case in Detroit. The chronology emerged Friday, one day after it was revealed the Dearborn native had been captured by Coalition-backed forces in Syria while believed to be fighting for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Though Musaibli was captured overseas, he could be prosecuted in Detroit, the federal jurisdiction which covers his hometown of Dearborn, said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor. The Times reported that it is likely Musaibli has been charged in a sealed federal court filing. "We’re not going to have any issues of entrapment or that the government somehow acted unfairly in targeting him. He was on the battlefield," Henning said. "It's much easier when it's a black-and-white case."

On the top of what is likely Detroit's hippest parking structure, a mural is gaining attention. The focus on the colorful piece of artwork over the entrance to an elevator shaft, however, has as much to do with the artist's federal lawsuit against General Motors as it does about the impression left by the piece. The Swiss artist Adrian Falkner is accusing the Detroit automaker of copyright infringement in a GM ad campaign for Cadillac. Falkner, who signs his work "SMASH 137," maintains that the mural on top of the Z Garage, one piece of Dan Gilbert's empire of Bedrock-owned properties downtown, was a centerpiece of an ad campaign in 2016 for the Cadillac XT5. GM dismisses the claim, which seeks unspecified compensation. John Rothchild, an associate professor at Wayne State University Law School, said such cases are not necessarily unique. "It's not unusual to have a case challenging the use of an image in the background of an advertisement of a television program," he said. "That happens frequently. This is a little bit unusual because it involved graffiti in an outdoor location, but even that is not unique."

Professor Jonathan T. Weinberg is Wayne State University Law School’s inaugural associate dean for research and faculty development.  

On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers by holding that a 2015 California law regulating them, the Reproductive FACT Act, violates the First Amendment. I am a constitutional law professor who has written extensively on the First Amendment.

Forty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state could require nonmembers of a public employee union to pay an “agency fee,” otherwise known as costs of collective bargaining, for their representation by the union.

Unless you’ve fallen into the sinkhole on the White House lawn, you’re well aware of President Trump’s Twitter declaration that he can pardon himself just like he would anyone else.

The Supreme Court has handed down a landmark privacy decision in a case about cellphone location data, suggesting there should be stronger protections against government searches for the increasing amount of private information that’s stored online.

Europe’s new data privacy rules, the General Data Protection Regulation, have taken effect, but what they actually mean remains to be discovered. And whether the GDPR, as it’s known, really helps protect your private data may depend on complaints that Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, filed against Google, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on the day the regulation went into effect.

Nick Schroeck with the Environmental Law Clinic at Wayne State University, says it used to be common for manufacturers to dispose of chemicals with little thought of long-term ramifications. “Back, pre-environmental law, think pre-1970s, you may have had chemicals that were just dumped out back behind the factory,” says Schroeck. ”Now we know these PFAS chemicals are very persistent in the environment, meaning they don’t break down. They’re in the environment for a very, very long time… They would accumulate over time in the groundwater plume under the soil.”

A Supreme Court ruling in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a custom cake for a same-sex wedding could mark the first step toward allowing businesses to withhold certain services based on religious grounds, but it doesn't open the floodgates for widespread discrimination.

Why Michigan needs to draw more revenue from its booming bottled water industry. Michigan, the “Great Lakes state,” sits in the middle of one-fifth of the Earth’s surface freshwater. It has a higher percentage of surface water than any other American state. 

Robert Sedler, a professor of law at Wayne State University, examines the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and people’s right to remain silent. Supreme Court Justices have previously ruled that the government cannot compel people to speak its message or associate with ideas they do not hold. The Supreme Court will decide two right-to-silence cases this term. “The First Amendment protects a person’s right to convey his own message, to voice her own ideas and not to be compelled to publicly disclose personal beliefs and associations,” he said. “When the government tries to compel a person to speak its message, these rights are seriously damaged. The right to free speech is likewise violated when people are required to associate themselves with an idea with which they disagree.”

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Bridget Mary McCormack will deliver the keynote address at Wayne State University Law School’s Com­mence­ment ceremony on Monday, May 14.

Over the last two years, according to an analysis by the Free Press and BuzzFeed, at least 50 violent acts, two a month, have occurred on Facebook and Instagram live and Twitter's Periscope — the latest one here in Detroit. Criminologist Matthew Larson, an associate professor of criminology at Wayne State University, said given the millions of live-streams every day, "these acts of violence are especially rare and no doubt outliers." 

Opening a new potash mine in Western Michigan would bring almost 200 jobs and billions of dollars to the state’s economy. It would also require more water to be withdrawn at a location not far from the spot where Nestle is already withdrawing water at a rate that allows the company to package 4 million bottles of water a day. 

This week,  the Wayne Law Review and the Levin Center at Wayne State University Law School will present a symposium on Congressional Oversight in the 21st Century.