Paul G. Cassell

Paul G. Cassell | Ronald Wilson Reagan Public Policy Award
S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah

Paul G. Cassell is among the Nation’s most distinguished legal defenders of victims’ rights, with a long history of bipartisan support throughout his vast career. Professor Cassell received a B.A. (1981) and a J.D. (1984) from Stanford University, where he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class and was President of the Stanford Law Review. 

He clerked for then-Judge Antonin Scalia when Scalia was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1984-85) and for Chief Justice Warren Burger of the U.S. Supreme Court (1985-86). He went on to serve as an Associate Deputy Attorney General with the U.S. Justice Department (1986-88) and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (1988-1991). 

Professor Cassell joined the S.J. Quinney College of Law faculty at the University of Utah in 1992, where he taught full-time until July 2002 when he was sworn in as a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah. In November 2007, Judge Cassell resigned the position to return full-time to the College of Law to teach, write, and litigate crime victims’ rights and criminal justice reform issues. 

Professor Cassell was instrumental in the passage of Utah’s Victims’ Rights Amendment in November 1994. He was a key member of the National Victims Constitutional Amendment Network, which led to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush supporting a federal Crime Victims’ Rights Amendment. He testified before Congressional committees in support of a federal amendment in 1996-1999, 2012, 2013, and 2015. 

Recently he has been heavily involved in efforts to pass Marsy’s Laws protecting victims’ rights in state constitutions, providing supportive testimony in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. Currently, Professor Cassell teaches crime victims’ rights, criminal procedure, criminal law, and related classes at the University of Utah. 

He published numerous law review articles on criminal justice issues in journals such as the Stanford Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology and co-authored the nation’s only law school textbook on crime victims’ rights, Victims in Criminal Procedure. 

Professor Cassell’s advocacy extends beyond the classroom, as he has briefed and argued pro bono cases relating to crime victims’ rights before the U.S. Supreme Court, the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and D.C. Circuits, several U.S. District Courts, the Utah Supreme Court, the Arizona Supreme Court, and various other courts around the country. He is a member of the American Law Institute and fellow of the American Bar Foundation.