Maria Fernanda Palma was born in 1955. She graduated from Law School and took her Masters, PhD and Aggregation in Legal Sciences at the Lisbon Law University, where she has been teaching since 1997. She is currently Chair of Law, heads the Criminal Sciences area and is the President of the Institute for Criminal Law and Criminal Sciences. From 1994 to 2007 she was a Constitutional Court Judge elected to that position by Parliament. She was United Nations Environmental Criminal Law Expert in 1994 and 1995 and a member of the Board of the Portuguese Philosophy Society in 1995 and 1996. In 1995 Maria Fernanda Palma Pereira was decorated by the President of the Republic with the designation »Grand Official of the Order of Prince Henry«. Besides her activities in Academia she is currently representative of Portugal at the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission).
