The United States Supreme Court refused to allow the case to proceed in a class-action capacity in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes (2011). Its decision effectively ended the attempt by over 1.5 million women to pursue a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart on the grounds of gender discrimination in promotions and compensation.

What did the Supreme Court decide?
The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the court below which had allowed the case to be heard on a class-action basis. It ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to meet the “commonality” requirement of Rule 23(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing class-action suits.

What is “Commonality”
Commonality mandates that every putative class member necessarily possesses a common issue of fact or of lawone that may be resolved in the same way for every member of the group.

For a class action lawsuit, it is significant because

It allows a single trial to decide dispositive issues of all class members

It ensures that all of the plaintiffs are injured in the same way by the same practice or policy.

How did the court justify its ruling?

The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, explicitly established that:

There was no “common policy of discrimination”.

Wal-Mart lacked any company policy that was formally discriminatory towards women.

Instead, managers had some degree of autonomy to determine promotions and compensation at the local level.

The decentralization here would result in any discrimination being store-by-store and manager-by-manager, and not store-by-store and manager-by-manager universally.

Statistical and anecdotal evidence proved to be inadequate.

The plaintiffs provided statistics and individual narratives in order to establish a pattern of discrimination.

The court ruled that such evidence did not establish that all of the women in the class suffered the same injury from the same corporate policy.

You cannot write thousands of cases at once without having one general problem.

Since there was no one reason that each of the women was to be refused a promotion or raise, the Court held that these cases were to be addressed individually and not together in a whole group. Why This Matters The decision raised the bar that class-action lawsuits — and especially class-action suits against large, decentralized corporations — will be required to meet in the future. It will be more difficult to pursue systemic discrimination claims unless plaintiffs can point to a discrete, centralized policy that harmed all members of the class in the same way.

How Is the War on Terror Different from Traditional Wars?
P. Williams argues that the War on Terror is a distinct kind of war since it does not fit into the classical model of warfare among states. Instead, it is:

Asymmetrical: Unlike the traditional wars in which two or more countries fight each other, the War on Terror is aimed at non-state actors (e.g., terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda) rather than a specific country.

Unending: Classical wars have clear goals and will usually conclude in a peace accord, but since the War on Terror lacks an identified enemy state, it can’t be easily declared won or ended.

Global & Nonlinear: Unlike conventional wars waged at a particular terrain, terrorism doesn’t have limitations of place because it can strike anywhere, implying that the arena of battle cannot be localized within a specific place.

Preemptive: Unlike responding to direct threats, the War on Terror is often fought through preemptive attacks based on intelligence about impending threats.

2. Roving Wiretaps & the Bill of Rights
The Patriot Act’s Roving Wiretaps allow the government to tap a person rather than a specific device (such as a telephone line). This allows the authorities to listen in on any form of communication the suspect is using—phones, emails, etc.—without specifying the specific device beforehand.

This would seem to suspend the Fourth Amendment Rights, which protect against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fourth Amendment requires warrants to be specific, that they define the property to be searched and the items to be seized. Roving wiretaps, however, permit sweeping eavesdropping without the required level of detail that the Fourth Amendment prescribes.

3. Sneak and Peek Warrants
“Sneak and Peek” Warrants (also known as delayed-notification warrants) allow the police to search a home or business without notifying the owner first. Police must normally notify the suspect when they execute a search using a search warrant, but Sneak and Peek warrants allow them to delay it for weeks or months.

This also seems to violate the Fourth Amendment, as it dismantles one’s ability to dispute a search. It’s also questionable under the First Amendment because it can permit clandestine entry into one’s private records, whether they are books, e-mails, or political beliefs.

These amendments were introduced on the basis that they were going to be used as anti-terrorism provisions, but they have been condemned for their grant of excess in government surveillance powers through erosion of constitutional protection.

1. Establishment Clause & Lemon Test
   Establishment Clause is a clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution that states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” It forbids the government from favoring, promoting, or supporting any religion.

The Lemon Test is named after the Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) and is used to determine whether a law or government action violates the Establishment Clause. The test has three parts:

The law must have a secular purpose (not religious).

The primary effect of the law must not advance nor inhibit religion.

The law must not result in excessive government entanglement with religion.

If a law infringes any of these three tests, the law is unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause.

2. Flag Burning & the First Amendment
   Yes, flag burning is protected under the First Amendment as free speech. The leading Supreme Court case confirming this protection is Texas v. Johnson (1989).

In this case, Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag as a protest against the Reagan administration. He was arrested under a Texas law banning flag desecration, but the Supreme Court ruled that the law violated his First Amendment rights. The Court held that burning the flag was a form of symbolic speech, and the government could not prohibit it just because it was offensive.

The term “faction” in the #10 Federalist comes to mind with the concept of social and economic stratification that we have discussed. A faction, according to Madison, consists of a group of citizens unified by a common interest that is generally hostile to the people or the public interest. This is a direct correlation to the colonial America’s class distinctions, with the wealthy elite and disfranchised poor having competing interests. The Founding Fathers, and Madison in particular, feared that if political authority was granted to the majority—the common man, the working- and lower-class citizen—then they would use it to trample the rights of the rich minority. The Constitution was therefore drafted to restrain factions by limiting direct popular authority.

The root cause of wealth (private property), as argued by Federalist #10, is the natural distinction among people. Madison argues that the differences, which he calls “faculties”, are the innate capacity, aptitude, or talents that determine the capacity of a person to achieve and retain property. Under this understanding, certain people have faculties that enable them to accumulate wealth, and others do not have faculties and hence are poor. Such an explanation renders economic disparity an innate and necessary byproduct of human distinctions rather than a result of institutions or policy. However, such an understanding overlooks external factors such as inherited wealth, systemic barriers, and social privilege that also explain economic distinctions. While others could agree with Madison’s understanding, others could argue that wealth is not entirely a result of personal capacity but also of economic and social conditions that one cannot do anything about.


Madison sets out the first priority (“first object”) of the U.S. government as the protection of the right of property holders. Such a priority would come as a shock given that today government talk revolves around democracy, equality, and the public good as its raison d’être as opposed to protection of private property as its first priority. Yet in the historical context, it aligns with the interests of the Founding Fathers in the protection of the economic interests of the elite class. No wonder, therefore, that the Federalist #10 advocates a Republican (representative) system of government as opposed to a pure democracy. Madison was worried that a direct democracy would give the majority of the people (the working poor) the power to pass a bill of attainder that would redistribute wealth or harm property rights. In advocating a republic, Madison ensured that representatives elected to office—typically members of the elite class—would serve as a mediating force and have power over the masses. This is another way the Constitution was crafted to maintain the power of the rich to the detriment of the poor.

The most surprising statistic regarding wealth disparity in the United States (displayed on p. 29) is likely the reality that the richest 1% of. Americans possess more assets than the bottom 90% combined. This is particularly unsettling because it indicates the extent to which economic power rests in the hands of a privileged few, and the vast majority have far less of a stake in the resources. This degree of disparity may make it essentially impossible for the poor to earn wealth, become debt-free, or receive advantages that the rich simply assume as their due, such as access to good schooling, good medicine, and owning a home.

The impact of such hyper-wealth disparity is staggering. Such a society often has diminished social mobility, heightened poverty, and undermined democratic institutions, since the wealthy disproportionately hold sway over politics and policymaking. In addition, wage stagnation and rising cost of living force the majority of people into debt, unemployment insecurity, and economic worry, while the rich continue to accumulate more wealth and capital. Ultimately, this gap can lead to greater social unrest, economic unrest, and disillusionment with the system.

This process is evident in everyday life in many ways. For example, housing affordability has been a severe crisis in cities across the country, where working-class families are priced out of their communities by increasing costs as wealthy investors buy homes for speculative reasons. Another such example is the increasing educational inequality where wealthier families are able to enroll their children at private school and elite universities while poorer children carry student loan debt and under-funded public education. These daily realities reinforce the ways in which wealth inequality touches nearly every facet of society, from access to jobs to health care and political power.

M-C-M’ formula illustrates the process with which the capitalist maintains and accumulates their wealth by means of capital accumulation cycle. The cycle is initiated by investment of M (Money) in purchasing C (Commodities)—raw material, machinery, and labor power—to produce products or services. The commodities are then sold to achieve M’ (More Money), and in this M’ the original money as well as extra surplus value (profit) is included. The idea of this cycle is that capitalists need to receive more value from production than they initially invested.

Exploitation of labor is one of the most significant things about it, as capitalists only pay the laborers less than what the work is worth. For example, the laborer might be paid for working eight hours, but what the laborer produces is worth more than what is paid. This surplus value is amassed by the capitalist to be invested and circulated again to repeat itself on a growing scale. Capitalists also exploit to extract maximum profit through downsizing, speedups, contract labor, and wage depression to extract maximum surplus to keep costs and attain maximum surplus.

This cyclical process of M-C-M’ enables the capitalists to amass wealth and have economic power, while the workers, who receive only wages and no surplus value, are dependent upon selling their labor to survive. With time, this widens the economic gap, as wealth in the hands of the owners of the means of production grows further, contributing towards consolidation of the capitalist class’s influence in society.

1. the distinctions are basically who owns the means of production and at the end the worker who provides profit to the company trough hard labor doesnt get any of the shares from it more that his hourly wage, but this cannot be tied with I pointed out directly in N. 2. we need to take in consideration that the worker is hired by a department that controls the C.E.O, the C.E.O is worth of these shares because all the proccess he made to get there, which is truly fair, is the opportunity and determination these workers may have in order to escalate and found their own companies with the experience obtained, and their ideas, because in a country like america, some things may be hard but no impossible
2. Adam Smith asically points out the value of the effort made to create profit from any source, it is not the product itself that needs to set the value or the price, but everything before it, the manufacturing, the marketing, the selling and the brand that provides true value and profit to the product. I do agree with Smith’s Quote because he use the value of labor to base a standard and it should be like that not only with products but also with anything we do, our effort set the worth of the result
3. I do agree that class is not an identity, it is part of the essence of all of us that grew up poor, but as a person that grew up in very humble conditions, I asked myself how can I change this? so I educated myself financialwise and spiritualwise and now I can’t say I am rich but I am able and open to more opportunities than when I was a teenarger. Now I can afford college, I have a job that allowsme to travel twice a year and my credit score is going up every month, and this is just the begining. all of this is because of being constant and patient, working hard and having a lot of faith
4. I do agree with the stated in the lecture about the dependecy and codependency among social classes, it is paradoxically and ironically true, a big company such mcDonalds cannot make profit without all its employees whose statiscally come from a working class or student background

According to Althusser Repressive state apparatus are those institutions that works trough coercion, force or the threat such the police, military and courts

in the other hand, Ideological state apparatus are the opposite institutions that works tr ough persuasion, teachings and behavioral developments to make individuals accept the social norms. such school, family, religious organizations and few cultural systems

the difference is mainly the approach it have to the individual, mode of operation, the visibility and function

RSA are direct, visible and forced

ISA are indirect, subtle and persuasive

An example of an Ideology is Catholicism it is subtle but firm, it provides the Christian ethics and moral through the sacred scriptures, it is a philosophy based on loving your neighbor.

in some cases this ideology is conveyed from home, from a very little age, and it shapes how you see the world, how you see yourself and how you treat other people