Carissa Byrne Hessick is a criminal justice scholar. Currently, she is a Law Professor and the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project at the University of North Carolina.Hessick's research interests include criminal law, the structure of the criminal justice system, criminal sentencing, and child pornography crimes. She 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.Hessick received her B.A. in Linguistics from Columbia College of Columbia University and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. 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.