Job o’ the Day: The Simon Karas Fellowship in the Ohio Attorney General’s Office!

The Solicitor General/Appeals section of the Ohio Attorney General’s office is looking for new lawyers, recent graduates, or attorneys with limited experience to apply for the 2013 -2014 Simon Karas Fellowship! The Fellow works with the Ohio Attorney General’s Solicitor General, Deputy Solicitors, and other top lawyers in their office on Ohio’s major appellate cases, which often involve constitutional questions or hotly debated public policy concerns. Many of the cases are headed to the U.S. Supreme Court or are already there.

The office’s recent cases provide examples of the kind of work the Karas Fellow will accomplish. From the PSJD job listing:

  • Ohio has a busy practice in the U.S. Supreme Court. Our U.S. Supreme Court practice covers a wide variety of cases. In Bobby v. Dixon, for example, we successfully defended the constitutionality of a criminal interrogation under Miranda. In Levin v. Commerce Energy, the Court agreed with us that, under principles of comity and federalism, challenges to state tax laws must be filed in the state courts. We have also filed amicus briefs in a number of highprofile cases: Williams v. Illinois (admissibility of expert testimony about the results of DNA testing in criminal trials); Merck v. Reynolds (fraud claims under federal securities laws); and Doe v. Reed (First Amendment challenge to state law requiring public disclosure of ballot petitions).
  • In recent years, the Fellows have worked on other U.S. Supreme Court cases involving double jeopardy, school vouchers, free exercise of religion, federalism and state immunity, interstate commerce, and more.
  • The Karas Fellow also assists with cases in the Ohio Supreme Court, where we appear often, both as a party and as an amicus. To name only a few, our recent cases have involved the standard for imposing civil penalties under Ohio’s environmental enforcement laws, the constitutionality of Ohio’s Smoke Free Work Place Act, the eligibility requirements for seeking recovery for wrongful imprisonment, the constitutionality of Ohio’s bifurcation statute in civil trials involving punitive damages, the liability of mortgage servicers for fraudulent acts connected with the nationwide mortgage crisis, and the admissibility of physician apologies in medical malpractice cases. We are also defending the State against multi-million dollar lawsuits that allege state constitutional challenges to certain state taxes.
  • We also brief and argue many cases in the Sixth Circuit, and the Karas Fellow assists with those appeals as well. This past year, our Karas Fellow presented oral argument in the Sixth Circuit in a case concerning the constitutionality of a juvenile criminal sentence.

The deadline to apply is October 19, 2012. Check out the full listing, including qualifications and salary, on PSJD.org (log-in required).