Professor Fiona Doherty Appointed to Connecticut Sentencing Commission

Fiona M. Doherty ’99, the Nathan Baker Clinical Professor of Law and director of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School, was appointed to the Connecticut Sentencing Commission by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont. Doherty succeeds Sarah French Russell ’02, U.S. District Judge for the District of Connecticut and former director of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School. She will serve a four-year term. 

At the Law School, Doherty teaches courses in criminal law and sentencing and her current scholarship focuses on supervised release, probation, and parole. She founded the Criminal Justice Clinic, which defends indigent clients accused of felony and misdemeanor offenses in New Haven, and is the School’s first female graduate to serve on its tenured clinical faculty. Her teaching has earned her the Yale Provost’s Teaching Prize as well as the Yale Law Women Faculty Excellence Award.

Outside of academia, Doherty’s professional experience includes serving as an assistant federal defender in the Southern District of New York, senior counsel at Human Rights First in New York City, and clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was also a Bernstein Fellow, traveling to Northern Ireland to work on cases involving the targeting of defense lawyers during the conflict.