Ohioans are confused by abortion, marijuana issues
in the people, the Ohio Constitution says – and a vote on constitutional amendment is the most important use of that power, more important than choosing a legislature or a governor, more important than turning out bums at city hall. Politicians come and go.
Laws – and especially the constitution – tend to stay around. Since Ohioans gained the power to directly amend the state constitution in 1912, no voterpassed constitutional amendment has ever been repealed.
The Ohio Constitution also calls me the chief law officer of the state. When we’re talking about the legal effects of proposed new laws, it’s directly in the wheelhouse of the attorney general’s office.
I assembled an internal team of lawyers and other professionals to do these analyses and vet each other’s work, and mine. Our goal was to call balls and strikes – what’s in and what’s out – and to admit when we can’t tell.
Some people are going to be skeptical about inherent bias, but lawyers train to be able to argue both sides of a case. If you can’t see the other guy’s case, and understand it, you’re going to lose a lot of cases. I’ve told lawyers who’ve worked with me for the past 25 years that if you fall in love with your theory of the case, get ready to have your heart broken.
I’m aware that a relatively small number of people will read these documents. We tried hard to make them accessible to non-lawyers, but it’s complicated stuff.
But the people who will read them are opinion leaders, the kind of folks the rest of us ask during halftime of a football game on the weekend before the election, “Hey, what do you think about those issues?”
Maybe a few arguments will be settled between the warring camps.
When I was a young newspaper reporter, I worked for a Scripps paper. The founder, E.W. Scripps, was famous for saying this: “Give light, and the people will find their own way.”
In my experience, they really do.
Dave Yost is Ohio’s attorney general.