Stefano Rodotà

Stefano Rodotà (30 May 1933 – 23 June 2017) was an Italian jurist and politician.

Early life

Born in 1933 in Cosenza, to a middle-class family of Arbëreshë origin from San Benedetto Ullano, he attended Liceo classico Bernardino Telesio in his hometown and later the Sapienza University of Rome, where he graduated in 1955 under professor Emilio Betti, an Italian jurist, Roman Law scholar, philosopher and theologian, best known for his contributions to hermeneutics.

He was the brother of the engineer Antonio Rodotà and father of journalist Maria Laura Rodotà, a columnist for the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Academic career

Rodotà was accepted to Sapienza University of Rome's law school, where he graduated in 1955.

He then became Professor of Civil Law at the Sapienza University of Rome, where he was conferred the title of Emeritus.

As well as giving lectures and seminars at several universities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Latin America, and India, he was a visiting scholar at All Souls College in Oxford and Stanford Law School on a Fulbright grant. He later became a professor at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University Faculty of Law and collaborated with the Collège de France. Subsequently he was granted honorary degree by the Michel de Montaigne University Bordeaux 3 and the University of Macerata.

Rodotà was the Chairman of the Administrative Council of the International University College of Turin and also a committee member of the NEXA Center for Internet and Society a research center founded at the Department of Control and Computer Engineering of Polytechnic University of Turin.