September 13, 2004

Thanks to former Gov. John Engler's appointments, the Michigan Supreme Court has by our lights the finest overall recent record of any state supreme court in the country (for coverage on some resulting controversies follow the links from Overlawyered Nov. 7 and Nov. 9, 2000; Jul. 3-4, 2001). Not long ago the state's Chamber of Commerce issued a report pulling together some of the court's greatest jurisprudential hits of recent years, entitled "Judicial Conservatism at Work: A Look at the Michigan Supreme Court 1999-2003" (Colleen Pero, author -- PDF). And the Washington Legal Foundation recently issued a paper praising the court's ruling upholding liability reform in the car rental field (Thomas J. Foley and Jill I. Zyskowski, State High Court Strikes Latest Blow Against Tort Reform Nullification -- PDF).