Professor Sir Vasilios Markezinis died at the age of 79

The well-known professor Sir Basil Markezinis has passed away at the age of 79, after years of suffering from dementia. V. V. Markezinis breathed his last breath in Oxford, where he had been living for the last few years.

Who was Vasilios Markezinis

He was born in Athens on 10 July 1944 and was the son of Spyros Markezinis who had formed the «democratised» government within the Papadopoulos dynasty, which was overthrown by the Ioannidis coup. Vassilios Merkezinis received his law degree from the Law School of the University of Athens with a grade of 10 and his first doctorate with honors. He was a full professor at the University of Texas and the founder and director of the Institute of International Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a full professor at the University of London, where he founded and directed the Institute of Global Law from 2001 to 2007, as well as at the University of Leiden (Netherlands) and the University of Oxford, where he founded and directed the Institute of European and Comparative Law from 1995 to 2001. In addition, he has taught at twenty-five universities around the world, authored thirty-three books and over one hundred and thirty legal articles, which have been published in law journals around the world.

His works have been translated into German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese. He was a Fellow of the British Academy, Corresponding Fellow of the French Academy and the Academy of Athens, Foreign Fellow of the Belgian, Dutch and Italian Academies (Academia dei Lincei), as well as of the American Law Institute. Since 1997, he has held the title of Honorary Counsel to the Queen of Great Britain (Queen's Counsel), and since 2000 he has been Special Scientific Advisor to the First President of the French Court of Cassation (Cour de Cassation). Since 2007, he has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.

He has been awarded the highest honours, including the Order of the Order of Honour by the Greek State (2000), the Grand Cross of the Order of Honour by Italy (2002), the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour of France (2004), the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit by France (2006), as well as the Senior Brigadier General of the Order of the Ribbon and Star from Germany (2005). In 2005 he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for distinguished service to international legal relations, so in Britain he carries the title of Sir.

In his recent works, he deals with the crisis that has affected Greece in recent years. He places the beginning of the corruption of the political system in the 1965 apostasy and the overthrow of the government of George Papandreou by extra-institutional means, while among the leaders of the post-independence period he praises Andreas Papandreou for a correct and patriotic foreign policy.