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.
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Criminal Law & Procedure: Evaluating the Progressive Prosecutor Experiment
2024 National Lawyers Convention
The Washington Hilton1919 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20009
Debating Plea Bargains: Coercive or Just?
North Carolina Student Chapter
North Carolina Student Chapter160 Ridge Rd.
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is A Bad Deal
Illinois Student Chapter
University of Illinois College of Law504 E Pennsylvania Ave
Champaign, IL 61820
Plea Bargains: a Good or Bad Deal?
Illinois Student Chapter
University of Illinois College of Law504 E Pennsylvania Ave
Champaign, IL 61820
Criminal Law & Procedure: Evaluating the Progressive Prosecutor Experiment
2024 National Lawyers Convention
It has been almost ten years since the advent of the ‘progressive prosecutor,’ local elected...
Criminal Law & Procedure: Evaluating the Progressive Prosecutor Experiment
2024 National Lawyers Convention
It has been almost ten years since the advent of the ‘progressive prosecutor,’ local elected...
Ethics of Client Coercion Webinar
Is it ethical for in-house attorneys to leverage their employer’s economic clout to interfere with...
Clash of the Titans: General Michael Flynn & Judge Emmett Sullivan - Does the DOJ have Unfettered Discretion to Dismiss the Flynn Prosecution?
Miami Lawyers Chapter - Online Event
On June 4, 2020, the Miami Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society hosted an online...
Clash of the Titans: General Michael Flynn & Judge Emmett Sullivan - Does the DOJ have Unfettered Discretion to Dismiss the Flynn Prosecution?
Miami Lawyers Chapter - Online Event
On June 4, 2020, the Miami Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society hosted an online...