​Pedro Martínez Fraga is a leading practitioner in the field of international litigation and international arbitration. He is the first Hispanic to have been appointed as one of four delegate members to the Panel of Conciliators of the World Bank International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He has represented Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Spain and Dominican Republic in international litigations.

Beyond his solid experience, Martínez Fraga is a prolific content producer. He has written over 50 academic articles and published six books on private and public International Law.

Universidad del Pacífico University Press published the Spanish language edition of "Public Purpose in International Law: Rethinking Regulatory Sovereignty in a Global Era" During the presentation of this new edition of the book, Martínez Fraga was recognized as Honorary Professor of UP. 

The event began with the words of Fernando Cantuarias, Dean of Universidad del Pacífico Law School, who highlighted his career as one of the main practitioners in the field of litigation and international arbitration. "He is a faithful believer in Investment Law as a mechanism for the development of third world countries. He explains to his students that the consolidation of legal security is fundamental for foreign investors and is the most effective means for the development of countries. We are in front of a jurist in every sense of the word".

Martínez Fraga addressed the audience and highlighted the problem of expropriation in unilateral treaties and public purpose. "It is the states that define their criterion of what public purpose is; and many good, but also bad things have been done on behalf of public purpose. We still have a legacy of public purpose dating back to the time of Homer and classical Greece".

The Honorary Professor stressed that the Greeks of Athens had two moralities: moral or personal ethics, which was subordinate to the State in order to prevail public purpose, and the State's. "This makes public purpose almost an absolute norm, even capable of justifying slavery in the past, when a wise man crossing a territorial line becomes an anthropod, a thing with feet that can be owned by third parties".

At the end of his speech, Martínez Fraga recommended that the intellectual community meditate on this concept. "I suggest that a criterion that can always be met is empty and without any meaning. Lawyer Ítalo Carrano, who participated in the presentation of the text, stressed that the text confronts the right of the State to regulate its natural resources and the limitations that the personal element wishes to put to the protection of investors.

"The task is difficult, I had many doubts during the reading: how to find the concept of public purpose in a fragmented world, why it does not work and how to replace it", he noted.

José Daniel Amado, a jurist who also participated as a panelist of the event, addressed the audience and remarked on the author's efforts. "It is not common to find a book that allows us to review principles that were already debated in times before ancient Greece".