Professor Palma Paciocco’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of criminal law and theory, criminal procedure, evidence, sentencing, and professional ethics. Her scholarship has examined a wide variety of criminal justice issues, including the privacy interests of criminal suspects, the mental states that ought to attract criminal liability, and the role of prosecutors in determining sentencing outcomes. Her doctoral dissertation, which she completed as a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow at Harvard Law School, considers the ethical obligations of prosecutors engaged in plea-bargaining.

Before beginning her doctoral studies, Professor Paciocco completed the Harvard Law School LLM program as a Thomas Shearer Stewart Travelling Fellow and a Landon H. Gammon Fellow. She holds BCL and LLB degrees from the McGill Faculty of Law, where she was awarded the gold medal, and a BA in philosophy and history from the McGill Faculty of Arts. Professor Paciocco served as a law clerk to the Honourable Justice Louise Charron of the Supreme Court of Canada. She is called to the bars of Ontario and New York.