Paul Cassell is the Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law at S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah.
Cassell received a B.A. (1981) and a J.D. (1984) from Stanford University, where he graduated Order of the Coif 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 United States Supreme Court (1985-86). Cassell then served 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 to 1991). Cassell joined the faculty at the College of Law in 1992, where he taught full time until he was sworn in as a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah in July, 2002. In November 2007, he resigned his judgeship to return full time to the College of Law to teach, write, and litigate on issues relating to crime victims' rights and criminal justice reform.
Professor Cassell teaches criminal procedure, crime victims' rights, criminal law, and related classes. He has also pubished numerous law review articles on criminal justice issues in journals such as the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. He is a co-author of the nation's only law school textbook on crime victims' rights, Victims in Criminal Procedure (various editions, most recently in its fourth edition published in 2018.
Professor Cassell has argued pro bono cases relating to crime victims' rights before multiple courts around the country, including the United States Supreme Court, the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and D.C. Circuits, several U.S. District Courts, the Utah Supreme Court, and the Arizona Supreme Court.