02 — Biography
A scholar of Roman law, in the service of the Italian school
Giuseppe Valditara came to the Ministry of Education and Merit after four decades spent between the university lecture hall, the Senate of the Republic and the administration of higher education.
Milan, the law, and a lifelong interest in institutions
Giuseppe Valditara was born in Milan on 12 January 1961, into a family with roots in the lower Novara area of Piedmont.[2] He studied law at the Università degli Studi di Milano, one of the country's great public universities, and chose an academic path focused on the legal history of Rome — a field that, in the Italian tradition, sits at the meeting point of law, history and political philosophy.
The choice says much about the arc of his later public life. Roman law in Italy is not an antiquarian discipline: it is taught as the grammar of the civil-law tradition, the place where concepts such as obligation, property, citizenship and public office first took durable form. Valditara's research would range from the Roman law of damage to the institutions of the Republic — the magister populi, the dictator, the Roman state — and, later, to the Roman roots of the modern constitutional order.[2]
That intellectual formation — institutional, historical, attentive to the relationship between rules and civic responsibility — recurs in the vocabulary he has brought to education policy: authority of the teacher, responsibility of the student, the school as an institution of the Republic.
The scholar
Professor of Roman private and public law
Valditara holds a full professorship (professore ordinario) in Roman private and public law in the Department of Law of the University of Turin.[2][3] Alongside his Turin chair he has been dean of the law degree programme at the Università Europea di Roma and scientific director of the law journal Studi giuridici europei.[2]
In 1992 his study of the magister populi received the International Prize for the History of Political and Legal Institutions, awarded under the Presidency of the Constitutional Court.[2] He also edited, for the publisher Giappichelli, an online edition of the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly — the body that drafted the Constitution of the Italian Republic in 1946–47.[2]
Selected works
A bibliography that runs from archaic Rome to the contemporary school
A selection of monographs as recorded in public bibliographic sources. Short descriptions indicate each work's subject as signalled by its title and are not summaries of its arguments.[2]
| Year | Title | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Studi sul magister populi | Research on the magister populi, the early Roman office of command — the study recognised in 1992 by an international prize under the aegis of the Presidency of the Constitutional Court. |
| 1996 | Damnum iniuria datum | The Roman law of wrongful damage to property, a cornerstone of the law of obligations. |
| 1998 | Sulle origini del concetto di damnum | A return to the conceptual origins of "damnum" in archaic Roman law. |
| 1999 | Studi di diritto pubblico romano | Collected studies in Roman public law. |
| 2008 | L'immigrazione nell'antica Roma | Immigration, citizenship and integration in the ancient Roman world. |
| 2015 | Lo stato nell'antica Roma | The structure of the Roman state. |
| 2018 | Civis Romanus Sum | Roman citizenship as a legal and civic identity. |
| 2021 | Il dictator tra emergenza e libertà | The Roman dictatorship as an emergency institution, between necessity and liberty. |
| 2022 | Alle radici romane della Costituzione | The Roman roots of the constitutional tradition. |
| 2024 | La scuola dei talenti | His account, as minister, of a school system built around the talents of every student. |
Public life
From the Province of Milan to Palazzo Madama
Valditara's engagement with public life began in the 1990s. In 1993 he joined the board of the Fondazione Bruno Salvadori, then led by the political scientist Gianfranco Miglio; in 1995 he joined Alleanza Nazionale, and in 1996 he was among the founders, with Pinuccio Tatarella, of the cultural association "Oltre il Polo".[2]
His first executive role was in education itself: from June 2000 to July 2001 he served as assessore for education and school buildings in the Province of Milan.[2] In 2001 he led Alleanza Nazionale's school and university department and was elected to the Senate for the Rho single-member constituency in Lombardy.[2]
He sat in the Senate for three legislatures, from 30 May 2001 to 14 March 2013.[1][3] From 2006 to 2013 he was secretary of the Senate's 7th Standing Committee for public education and cultural heritage, and he was the Senate rapporteur for Law 240 of 30 December 2010 — the university reform commonly known as the "Gelmini reform".[2][7]
In 2010 he joined Futuro e Libertà per l'Italia and later served as its regional coordinator in Lombardy; he did not stand in the 2013 general election.[2] Five years later he returned to the institutions in an administrative capacity, as head of the Department for Higher Education and Research at the then Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR), from October 2018 to December 2019.[2][5]
Chronology
Milestones, 1961–2026
- 1961
Born in Milan
Born on 12 January 1961.
- Early years
Law studies in Milan
Graduates in law from the Università degli Studi di Milano and begins research in Roman law.
- 1992
International prize
His work on the magister populi receives the International Prize for the History of Political and Legal Institutions.
- 1993–1996
Entry into public debate
Board member of the Fondazione Bruno Salvadori (1993); joins Alleanza Nazionale (1995); co-founds "Oltre il Polo" (1996).
- 2000–2001
Province of Milan
Assessore for education and school buildings.
- 2001
Elected to the Senate
Elected senator for Lombardy; re-elected in 2006 and 2008.
- 2006–2013
7th Standing Committee
Secretary of the Senate committee for public education and cultural heritage.
- 2010
University reform
Senate rapporteur for Law 240/2010 on the organisation of universities, academic staff and recruitment.
- 2018–2019
Ministry of Education, Universities and Research
Head of the Department for Higher Education and Research (October 2018 – December 2019).
- 2022
Adviser and candidate
Political adviser to Lega leader Matteo Salvini; stands in the general election of 25 September 2022 without being elected.
- 22 Oct 2022
Minister of Education and Merit
Sworn in at the Quirinale as a member of the government led by Giorgia Meloni, succeeding Patrizio Bianchi.[6]
- 2024
La scuola dei talenti
Publishes a book setting out his vision of the school.
- 2026
Fourth year in office
Continues as minister into the 2026/27 school year.
Intellectual interests
Three threads that run through the work
Authority and office
From the magister populi to the dictator and the Roman state, much of his scholarship examines how public power is defined, limited and made legitimate.
Belonging and integration
Works such as L'immigrazione nell'antica Roma and Civis Romanus Sum address how a political community defines its members.
Roots of the Republic
His edition of the Constituent Assembly proceedings and Alle radici romane della Costituzione link legal history to the founding text of 1948.
Sources & references (7)
- Senato della Repubblica — Scheda di attività di Giuseppe Valditara, XVI Legislatura
- Wikipedia (IT) — Giuseppe Valditara
- Wikipedia (EN) — Giuseppe Valditara
- AGI — "Valditara, il giurista leghista all'Istruzione", 21 October 2022
- Il Sole 24 Ore — "Giuseppe Valditara, chi è il nuovo ministro dell'Istruzione e del Merito"
- MIM — "Il Ministro dell'Istruzione e del Merito Giuseppe Valditara ha giurato al Quirinale"
- Legge 30 dicembre 2010, n. 240 (university reform) — Normattiva
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