Peugh v. United States - Post-Argument SCOTUScast
SCOTUScast 2-27-13 featuring Carissa Byrne Hessick
SCOTUScast 2-27-13 featuring Carissa Byrne Hessick
On February 26, 2013, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Peugh v United States. The question in this case is whether a court violates the Constitution’s prohibition on “ex post facto” laws by using the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines in effect at the time of a defendant’s sentencing rather than those in effect at the time of the underlying offense, when the newer Guidelines create a significant risk that the defendant will receive a longer sentence.
To discuss the case, we have Carissa Byrne Hessick, who is a Professor of Law at Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law.
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Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland "Buck" Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
Carissa Byrne Hessick joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2016. She serves as the Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland “Buck” Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law and as the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project. Her teaching and research interests include criminal law, the structure of the criminal justice system, criminal sentencing, and child pornography crimes. Hessick is the author of multiple law review articles, essays, and op eds on plea bargaining, the powers and selection of prosecutors, Sixth Amendment sentencing rights, and criminal statutes. Her work has appeared in the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the L.A. Times, the UCLA Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. She founded the Prosecutors and Politics Project in 2018. And she currently serves as the Reporter for the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Sentencing Standards Task Force.
Hessick attended Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and winner of the Potter Stewart Prize for the Morris Tyler Moot Court of Appeals. After graduating from law school, she clerked for Judge Barbara S. Jones on the Southern District of New York and for Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the D.C. Circuit. She also worked as a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City. Before joining the faculty at Carolina Law, Hessick taught on the faculties at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. She also spent two years as a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School.