Stephen Paskey

Stephen Paskey joined the University at Buffalo School of Law in 2009 after teaching for two years at Pacific McGeorge School of Law and working for 12 years as a litigating attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

Paskey entered the Justice Department through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. After working with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, he served for nine years as a senior trial attorney in the Office of Special Investigations, a unit that investigated and prosecuted U.S. residents who assisted in Nazi-sponsored persecution during World War II. From 2004 to 2007, Paskey was the lead attorney on the government’s deportation case against John Demjanjuk, who was deported to Germany for serving as an armed guard at the Sobibor extermination camp. In November 2008, Paskey received the Assistant Attorney General's Award for Human Rights Law Enforcement.

Paskey graduated with honors from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1994, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. From 1994 to 1995, he clerked for Hon. Arrie W. Davis on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

Paskey is a member of the Legal Writing Institute and the planning committee for the Empire State Legal Writing Conference. His scholarly interests involve the relationship between law, legal practice, and narrative theory. In October 2017, he received the Penny Pether Award for Law & Language Scholarship for his article "Telling Refugee Stories: Trauma, Credibility, and the Adversarial Adjudication of Claims for Asylum."