ISSN 2704-8098
logo università degli studi di Milano logo università Bocconi
Con la collaborazione scientifica di

Michele Papa
Professore ordinario di Diritto penale nell’Università di Firenze

Michele Papa (Rome 1959) is Professor of Criminal Law and of Comparative Criminal Law at the University of Florence.  He currently serves as a member of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (High Superior Council for the Judiciary) (term 2023-2027, appointment by the Parliament of the Italian Republic).

He was Dean of the University of Florence Law School (2006-2009) and Vice President of the University from 2009 to 2011 when he moved to Columbia Law School as a Visiting professor for the Fall semester (2011). He returned as a Visiting professor to Columbia Law School again in the Fall of 2013. Ha has been a visiting professor at Miami Law School (winter 2017, 2020), Stanford University (Florence campus 2014-2020), Osaka University (Winter 2014),  Georgetown University in Washington D.C. (Fall 2003). He was an Academic Visitor at King’s College (London, 1995) and at De Paul University College of Law (Chicago, 1984-1986).

In November 2024, Michele Papa received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).

Among his most recent publications:

Finis terrae: la pena abbandona il reato e spicca da sola il folle volo, in Criminalia 2023, 2025, 173 ss; 

Legislazione penale e metodo comparatistico, in C.E. Paliero, V. Mongillo e R. Bartoli (editors), La scienza della legislazione penale: riforme e prospettive di razionalizzazione, Esi, Napoli, 2024, pp. 131-146  

Leggere al caleidoscopio: utopie, distopie e visioni della giustizia, in A. Cattaneo, G. Forti, A. Visconti (editors), Oltre i confini della realtà. La fantascienza e gli universi distopici della Giustizia, Milano 2023, pp. 91-105

Quale statuto condiviso per il concorso di persone nel reato?, in Criminalia 2021, 2022, pp. 299-321;

He has written many other articles, including essays on Cesare Beccaria (Criminalia 2015) and on Federalisation of U.S. Criminal Law (Diritto penale XXI secolo, 2013).

Among his books: Fantastic Voyage, Attraverso la specialità del diritto penale, 2nd ed., Giappichelli 2019 (translated in French, Spanish and Romanian); Lezioni di diritto penale comparato (co-authored with F. Palazzo, Giappichelli, 2013); Crimes against property in Anglo-Americam Criminal Law (Utet 2013),

He is co-director of the Italian Criminal Law treatise, Trattato di diritto penale, (Wolters Kluiver), member of the editorial board of the Law Review, Criminalia, and Co-director of the law books Series, “Quaderni di diritto comparato, internazionale ed europeo” (Giappichelli publisher). He has also been a scientific consultant for the United Nations and for the European Union Commission.