Professor Ventoruzzo hosts U.S. Ambassador to Italy in his Italian classroom

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State Law professor Marco Ventoruzzo, who is teaching this semester at Bocconi University in Italy, hosted the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, John R. Phillips, today in his Comparative European and Business Law course.

Phillips’ talk, “A Better Legal Environment for a Better Investment Climate," focused on how legal rules and effective dispute resolution mechanisms can foster economic growth and foreign investment, a topic at the center of Ventoruzzo’s course on International Commercial Transactions at Penn State Law.

Phillips, a Pennsylvania native of Italian descent, was appointed by President Barack Obama on June 14, 2013, and confirmed by the Senate on August 1, 2013.

As a lawyer, he was the co-director of the Center for Law in the Public Interest (CLIPI) in Los Angeles for 17 years. In this capacity, he contributed to landmark legal developments on environmental issues, civil rights, consumer protection, and corporate fraud and accountability. Under Phillips’ leadership, CLIPI achieved important results, including improving Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood, increasing the number of women and minorities hired by the Los Angeles Police Department, and exposing foreign bribes and payoffs by U.S. corporations to foreign governments.

Phillips also played a significant role in the creation of the U.S. government's successful whistleblower reward program, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Ventoruzzo, who holds a dual appointment at Penn State Law and Bocconi University, is particularly interested, in his scholarship and teaching, in comparing U.S. law and the laws of European countries, working on international business transactions involving parties in these jurisdictions, and bridging the legal cultures existing on the two sides of the Atlantic.