Petros Mavroidis

(Columbia Law School, New York – Edwin B. Parker Professor of Foreign and Comparative Law)

A native of Thessaloniki in northern Greece -he loves basketball-, I first thought -like probably most of my fellow students- he was crazy. Yes. Crazyness is often confused with genius, they say. Could not be more true here. Prof. Mavroidis is a fine thought-provoking person. Always wearing his extravagant collection of ball-ties, his lectures on WTO Law & Economics were simple at first glance but intelectually brilliant. While reluctant at the beginning to praise the merits of trade -some ideological pre-concepts made that outcome difficult-, I had to agree with him, at the end of a Fall term of hard learning-process, that “trade”, like I had thought of “market” before, are just means, not ends. When confronted with my initial prejudices regarding liberalisation of world trade and the lack of labour/environmental standards to make it truly beneficial for all, he was quick to point out that Columbia’s offerings in international human rights are an essential complement to offerings on trade law. “If you want to be a public international lawyer, you need to examine it from many points of view,” he said. “Trade can teach you to be a wealthier person, but not a better person. Trade is a means to enhance the pie, but how you cut it is a matter of preference for each society.” He hoped to see the WTO succeeding not against the wheels of governments but as a consensus-driven organization. “In many areas of international law, as we saw in Iraq, you have true fighting between governments,” he said. “The WTO is one of the few areas in which you have states striving for true cooperation. At a certain level, trade means communication, and communication is the way to avoid wars.”

On top of the rewarding classroom experience, I got to enjoy his naive (and Greek) sense of humour during his several invitations for a coffee. We discussed a few times on my tough criticisms spread in all my session papers, but we eventually ended up talking about football or managing distance relationships. He was keen on recommending me to attend Prof. Gardner’s seminar -see above-, something for which I will remain sincerely grateful.