FedSoc Events

In this sequel to our panel last year on “The Limits of Federal Criminal Law,” we ask a distinguished panel to discuss how enforcement policy is evolving under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Is the Yates Memo targeting individual employees of a corporation still operative? Do the speeches of the new Attorney General give any insights into future enforcement tendencies? -- This event was held on J...

Antitrust policy during much of the Obama Administration was a continuation of the Bush Administration’s minimal involvement in the market. However, at the end of President Obama’s term, there was a significant pivot to investigations and blocks of high profile mergers such as Halliburton-Baker Hughes, Comcast-Time Warner Cable, Staples-Office Depot, Sysco-US Foods, and Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cig...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with an opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with this closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- The 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was held at the Mayfl...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with this opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with a closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- This panel of the 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was held...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with an opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with a closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- This panel of the 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was held a...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with an opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with a closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- This panel of the 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was held a...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with an opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with a closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- This panel of the 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was held a...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with an opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with a closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- This panel of the 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was held a...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with an opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with a closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- This panel of the 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was held a...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with an opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with a closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- This panel of the 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was held a...

The Fifth Annual Executive Branch Review Conference will examine the changing and often convoluted relationship between the legislative and the executive branches in the United States government. The Conference began with this opening address by Senator Mike Lee and concluded with a closing address by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. -- This address at the 2017 Executive Branch Review Conference was he...

State courts are often faced with cases raising arguments under state and federal law. If there are similar provisions in both the United States Constitution and the Ohio Constitution, how should judges interpret these provisions? Must they be interpreted in the same way? If not, then what is needed to justify a court's decision to interpret text in the Ohio Constitution differently than similar (...

In our nation's federalist system, the federal government's powers are limited to those that have been prescribed by the U.S Constitution, with additional powers reserved to the states. In recent years, state attorneys general have served as a robust check on executive branch overreach, increasingly using litigation to challenge federal encroachment with respect to environmental and land use issue...

The keynote address at the Inaugural Ohio Chapters Conference was delivered at the Athletic Club of Columbus on Friday, March 31, 2017, by J.D. Vance, Author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. He was introduced by Jedidiah Bressman, President of the Ohio State University Student Chapter.

Article V of the United States Constitution permits state legislatures to call a constitutional convention to consider amendments to the Constitution. State legislatures have never utilized this procedure. Calls for an Article V Convention have increased in recent years in response to the growth of the federal government. This panel will discuss whether the States should hold an Article V Conventi...

In Professor David Schoenbrod’s new book DC CONFIDENTIAL: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington, he asserts that in the 1960s, elected officials in Congress and the White House figured out a system for enacting laws and spending programs—one that lets them take the credit for promising good news while avoiding the blame for producing bad results. He argues that with five key tricks, politicians of...

For the past two decades, the U.S. has experimented with “market”-based competitive wholesale electric markets. Through FERC-superintended regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs), large regions of the country have procured electricity through a competitive generation model. Recently, those markets have been questioned as baseload electric resources – nucl...

The Federalist Society hosted a lunch and discussion on the role of Economic Liberty in the United States on Tuesday, March 28, 2017. -- Today, many job-seeking Americans and companies face significant government barriers that restrict their full participation in the economy. These barriers, often in the form of restrictive regulatory regimes, prevent consumers from using their skills, entering ne...

Senator Ted Cruz gives the keynote address to open the Federalist Society's lunch and discussion on the role of Economic Liberty in the United States on Tuesday, March 28, 2017. Senator Cruz was introduced by Mr. Dean A. Reuter, Vice President & Director of Practice Groups, The Federalist Society.

Professor Richard Epstein delivered the keynote address titled "A common lawyer looks at the constitutional protection for freedom of speech" during the 2017 National Student Symposium at Columbia Law School on Saturday, March 4, 2017. -- The theme of this talk is what happens if we think about freedom of speech as an ideal, without any of the standard constitutional glosses—strict scrutiny, purpo...

Universities have long been thought of, and cherished, as places for the free exchange of ideas. This idea has, however, come under pressure. Student groups have now routinely exercised pressure to keep people who they disagree with off campus. And safe spaces and trigger warnings—which limit speech that some have deemed offensive—have become regular features at universities across the nation. --...

In September, 2016, the United States Commission on Civil Rights released a report entitled Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties. In the report, the USCCR concluded that religious exercise is in tension with individual rights of certain subsections of the American population. It then went on to make a number of recommendations that suggest that that r...

In August 2016, the American Bar Association (ABA) added new anti-discrimination guidelines for lawyers to its Model Rules of Professional Conduct through section 8.4. This section now binds lawyers to adhere to particular speech codes in the many states that have adopted it. -- The provision labels engagement “in conduct that [a] lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discriminat...

Congress' passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 did not end the debate on campaign finance. Instead, it arguably created more legal questions than it did answers. -- The Act's passage quickly unleashed subsequent litigation, resulting in a number of Supreme Court decisions directly related to the BCRA and, more broadly, to general laws regulating campaign finance. These recent Supr...

The Internet has made information not only much more accessible, it has allowed almost anyone to be a provider of such information. -- This has not been without consequence: the refusal to take down an obscene video led to an eye-popping $140 million jury verdict and the subsequent collapse of Gawker Media. Personal e-mails or national secrets can quickly turn into political ammunition through the...