Legal scholar Vasillios Markezinis dies, aged 79
Sir Vasilios (Basil) Markezinis, a Greek-British barrister and legal scholar, has died in Oxford, United Kingdom, aged 79.
The news was made public on Monday by his long-time friend, Nikandros Bouras, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at King’s College, London, who said that Markezinis had been suffering from dementia in the past four years.
Markezinis was born in Athens on July 10, 1944, the son of the politician Spyros Markezinis. He received his law degree from the University of Athens with a perfect grade and his first doctorate with honors.
He was a tenured professor at the University of Texas and founder and director of the Institute for Transnational Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a professor at the University of London where he founded and directed from 2001 to 2007 the Institute of International Law, as well as the University of Leiden (Netherlands) and the University of Oxford where he founded and directed from 1995 to 2001 the Institute of European and Comparative Law.
During his career, he taught at twenty-five universities around the world, wrote 33 books and over 130 legal articles, which have been published in legal journals around the world.
He was honored with the highest distinctions, such as the Commander of the Order of Honor from the Greek state (2000), the Grand Cross of the Order of Honor from Italy (2002). In 2005 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to international legal relations.
