Maria Panezi

Research interests

• climate change
• world trade law
• progressive and inclusive trade agenda

Biography

Maria joined UNB Law in 2019. She received her LLB at the University of Athens in 2005 and her LLM at NYU Law in 2006; she was admitted to the Athens Bar in 2007. She knew early that she wanted to be a law professor, and returned to North America to pursue that career in 2008. She did her PhD at Osgoode Hall Law School, during which time she was also a teaching assistant at Osgoode Hall and a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School. She obtained her PhD in 2015 and moved to Waterloo, Ontario, where she started on a post-doctoral fellowship with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), later being promoted to a research fellow and subsequently director of the Summer Law Institute at Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Maria’s research focuses on the interaction between national strategies on climate change and World Trade Organization (WTO) law. Her teaching interests include International Trade Law, Public International Law, and Globalization and the Law; she also taught Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community. Maria has advised governments in Canada, emphasizing sustainable economic development clauses in trade agreements, labour standards, the economic empowerment of women, and has recently been researching and writing on economic opportunities for Indigenous peoples as they appear in Canada’s free trade agreements.

Courses taught

• Contracts
• International Trade Law
• Jurisprudence

Selected publications

Maria Panezi, The Complex Landscape of Canadian Indigenous Procurement, in Indigenous Peoples and International Trade - Building Equitable and Inclusive International Trade and Investment Agreements (John Borrows, Risa Schwartz Eds. Cambridge University Press, 2020) (pp. 217-247).

Maria Panezi, “Reevaluating Global Trade Governance Structures to Address Climate Change: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Green” (Council of Councils, Global Governance Working Paper, Council on Foreign Relations: July 2019).

Maria Panezi, “Formulating a Transnational Framework for the Promotion of a Gender-Positive Trade Environment” (Geneva Global Policy Briefs, Centre d’études juridiques européennes de l’Université de Genève: Brief No 5/2019).

Maria Panezi, “The Climate Change Tent and the Trade Cathedral: Assessing the Relationship Between Environmental Regulations and WTO Law after the Paris Agreement” in Global Environmental Change and Innovation in International Law, Neil Craik, Cameron Jefferies, Sara Seck, and Tim Stephens, eds (Cambridge University Press, 2018) 249–269.

Maria Panezi, “Why Ontario businesses should be objecting to Doug Ford's exit from the carbon pricing program” (9 July 2018) Financial Post, online edition.

Maria Panezi and Rohinton Medhora, “Will the Price Ever be Right? Carbon Pricing and the WTO” (2018) 10:1 Trade, Law & Development 18–31.

Maria Panezi, “The Two Noble Kinsmen: Internal and Legal Transparency in the WTO and their connection to Preferential and Regional Trade Agreements” (2016) 5:2 British Journal of American Legal Studies 539–569.

Maria Panezi, “The WTO and the Spaghetti Bowl of Free Trade Agreements: Four Proposals for Moving Forward” (CIGI Policy Brief No. 87, September 2016).

Maria Panezi, “When CO2 Goes to Geneva: Taxing Carbon Across Borders- Without Violating WTO Obligations” (CIGI Policy Paper 83, November 2015) 1–8.

Maria Panezi, “Mapping the Territory: Contextual Jurisprudence, Legal Pluralism and WTO Law and Development: A Response to William Twining’s Internal Critique Thesis from the Point of Transnational Jurisprudence” (2013) 4 Transnational Legal Theory 574–606.

Maria Panezi, “Sources of Law in Transition: Re-visiting General Principles of International Law” (2007) Ancilla Iuris 66–79.

Maria Panezi, “Sovereign Immunity and Violation of Jus Cogens Norms” (2003) 56:1 Revue Hellénique de Droit International 199–214.

Selected media interviews

20 January 2021, Washington Post, The Energy 202: Advocates want Biden to use trade deals to combat climate change

14 October 2020, Canadian Bar Association National Magazine, The difficult road to a green recovery; Not easy in a world that is both reeling from a pandemic and divided over how to respond to global warming

1 October 2018, National Post. Liberals' hopes stymied for Indigenous and gender-rights chapters in renegotiated NAFTA.

12 April 2018, Globe and Mail. Back and forth over the border - what will change?.

28 February 2018, NPR Planet Money. More Band for your Buck.