Aristides N. Hatzis

November 2007

Aristides N. Hatzis is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Law & Theory of Institutions at the Department of Philosophy & History of Science of the University of Athens (LL.B. 1989, LL.M. 1993, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Law School; LL.M. 1994, J.S.D 1999, University of Chicago Law School). He is an attorney-at-law and a member of the Thessaloniki Bar Association since 1992 and of the American Bar Association since 1994. He is a member of the steering committee of the European Network for Better Regulation (ENBR), as well as of the advisory board of the Society for European Contract Law (SECOLA) and he has been a member of the steering committee of the European Association of Law & Economics (EALE) from 2001 to 2006. His papers have been published in such journals as the International Review of Law & Economics, European Journal of Law & Economics, Commentaries in Law & Economics, etc. and in international collective volumes. He is the editor of three collective volumes: Economic Analysis of Law: A European Perspective (Elgar 2007), Methodology in Law and Economics (Elgar 2008) and Norms and Values in Law & Economics(Rout-ledge, 2008). He is the co-editor of the new journal Civil Law & Economics Review and a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Contract Law. He has refereed papers for over 15 journals and he has taught as Visiting Professor in several Greek and European universities.

While here at Yale Professor Hatzis gave a talk entitled “From Soft to Hard Paternalism and Back: The Regulation of Surrogate Motherhood in Greece,” A critical analysis of the regulation of surrogate motherhood in Greece. He discussed the way that a consensus reached in the legislative committee among liberal and conservative jurists on the matter of compensation of surrogate mothers was undermined by intra-party populism in the Greek parliament which banned it to avoid commodification; inevitably the law fell into disuse leading to a new law which allowed government-defined compensation, not the one agreed by the parties; the regulation of surrogate motherhood in Greece is a typical example of the deleterious effects of the combination of legal formalism and legal moralism in contemporary Greece.