The Past, Present, and Future of the Crime Victims’ Rights Movement
DATE: Wednesday, December 3 2025
TIME: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm MST
LOCATION: College of Law and Virtual Event
ABOUT THE EVENT:
Historically, crime victims played a central role in criminal justice processes through private prosecutions—i.e., the ability of victims to initiate or participate in criminal prosecutions. Today, while private prosecutions have been largely supplanted by public prosecutions, the victims’ rights movement has successfully restored the victims’ voice in criminal processes. The movement has reformed contemporary American criminal justice so that criminal processes now often include participatory rights for victims. As a result of state victims’ bills of rights, along with the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act, victims play an important role in criminal cases. Because these rights for victims are participatory rights rather an entitlement to substantive case outcomes, the victims’ rights movement is not a “carceral rights movement,” aimed solely at securing punitive sentences. Instead, the movement focuses on giving a voice to crime victims in their own criminal cases. This laudable effort has drawn broad support across the country. Efforts to expand and amplify victims’ voices in criminal proceedings are justified and likely to continue into the future.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Paul G. Cassell is an internationally recognized legal scholar on criminal and civil justice, crime victims’ rights, judicial process, and other legal issues. 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 concerning issues relating to crime victims’ rights and criminal justice reform. Professor Cassell has also published 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, and 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 fifth edition published in 2025). Professor Cassell has argued pro bono cases relating to criminal procedure and crime victims’ rights before the United States Supreme Court, the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and D.C. Circuits (including the 5th and 11th Circuits en banc), several U.S. District Courts, the Utah Supreme Court, and the Arizona Supreme Court. In 2020, Cassell received the Ronald Wilson Reagan Public Policy Award – National Crime Victims’ Service Award from the U.S. Department of Justice. Cassell is a member of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and an inaugural member of the Council on Criminal Justice. He is also an occasional blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy
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