Schedule

April 6, 2018 10:30 AM - 5:00 PM
The Westin Columbus
310 High Street
Columbus, OH, 43215

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Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer at The Buckeye Institute; and Daniel J. Dew, legal fellow at The Buckeye Institute’s Legal Center will be featured speakers at the Federalist Society’s 2018 Ohio Lawyers Chapters Conference.

Alt will moderate a luncheon panel discussion on Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, which was argued before the United States Supreme Court on February 26, 2018.

The case turns on the question of whether “agency fee” arrangements—which require workers to pay union fees to public sector unions to cover the unions’ activities other than political action—violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Buckeye Institute filed two amicus briefs in the case arguing that overturning Abood v. Detroit Board of Education is unlikely to cause significant decline in union membership or spending, with Alt saying the case “has the potential to be one of the most important labor and free speech cases in the past 40 years.”

The panelists are:

• William L. Messenger, staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, who argued Janus v. AFSCME before the Supreme Court; and
• L. Camille Hebert, Carter C. Kissell Professor of Law at Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.

Dew, the author of “Money Bail”: Making Ohio a More Dangerous Place to Live, will speak on the panel “Criminal Justice Reform: A Necessary Correction or a Dangerous Experiment?” The panel will look a range of issues including over-criminalization, prison reform, bail reform, and sentencing guidelines reform.

The panel will be moderated by the Honorable Sharon Kennedy, associate justice on the Ohio Supreme Court, and panelists are:

• Dave Yost, Ohio State Auditor;
• Daniel J. Dew, legal fellow at The Buckeye Institute’s Legal Center; and
• Heather Childs, Vice President, Compliance, Capital One.

The conference will also feature opening remarks by Chad A. Readler, acting assistant attorney general of the United States Department of Justice Civil Division, and will include panels on originalism and federalism and analyzing Ohio’s judicial system and the Ohio Supreme Court.