Mario Gaspare R. Oriani-Ambrosini (26 October 1960 – 16 August 2014) was an Italian constitutional lawyer and politician who was a Member of Parliament in South Africa with the Inkatha Freedom Party.
Oriani-Ambrosini was born in Rome in 1960. He was the son of Columbia University trained constitutional law professor and international lawyer Raffaele Oriani, who died in 1971, at 39.
He was then adopted and raised by his grand-uncle Gaspare Ambrosini, an Italian founding father, jurist and statesman, who presided over the Italian Constitutional Court. Oriani-Ambrosini's education was influenced by his grand uncles, Vittorio Ambrosini a founder of the Italian arditi, and Antonio Ambrosini, an international law professor credited as the architect of the Warsaw Convention. On the paternal side, he was related to Alfredo Oriani, a futurist who subscribed to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Even though his adoptive father was a leader of Democrazia Cristiana, Oriani-Ambrosini spent his teenage political activism under the wing of Marco Pannella, the leader of the Italian nonviolent radical, environmentalist and libertarian movement. Oriani-Ambrosini maintained a lifelong association with it and was a member of its General Council.
Oriani-Ambrosini attended the Sapienza University of Rome, Harvard University and Georgetown University Law Center. Over a three-year period at Rome University, he assisted former President of the Italian Constitutional Court, Professor Francesco Paolo Bonifacio, with seminars on constitutional justice. He conducted research under the direction of the Secretary of the Italian Parliament, Guglielmo Negri, for the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and the Italian Chamber of Deputies on the US environmental system and the National Environmental Policy Act to support the drafting of an EEC directive and assess its compatibility with the Italian constitutional framework. Oriani-Ambrosini also assisted Prof. Nicola Greco in his conducting of seminars which focused on public enterprise law at the Universita' di Pisa. From the age of 17, Oriani-Ambrosini worked in the family law firm preparing written legal briefs and arguments.
After winning a Fulbright scholarship, Oriani-Ambrosini relocated to the United States to specialize in constitutional law and international financial and commercial law. In 1986, he became the right-hand man of Rutgers University law professor, Albert Blaustein, an international constitutional consultant who participated in the writing of over 30 constitutions worldwide.
He assisted Blaustein in a graduate seminar on constitution's drafting and became the Vice President of the Philadelphia Foundation and the public-advocacy UN-accredited law-firm Human Rights Advocates International, both presided over by Blaustein. He engaged in constitutional negotiation, lobbying, and public interest litigation in respect of Nicaragua (electoral law), the Russian Federation (preparation of the first draft constitution), Canada (position of Indian tribes in the national constitution and the tribes' own constitutions), Uganda, Fiji (constitution drafting), Romania (representing Alliancia Civica), Poland, Rom Nation, Italy (constitutional reports), the Moluccan Nation (Government in exile), Macedonia (representing VMRO), Cuba (shadow Government), Tibet (Government in Exile), proposed State of Humania, Seychelles (constitutional advisor to Sir James Mancham) and Zaire (Advisor to Paramount Chief Logotongo III). L He also acted as a legal advisor to the Rehoboth Basters of Namibia with respect to land claims and regional autonomy, and the Afrikaner cultural institutions known as "Cultura 2000" in the first challenge on the constitutionality of a law, and in the challenge to single medium-of-instruction education. Oriani-Ambrosini also collaborated on the upkeep of the Blaunstein's 60+ volume collections of "The Constitutions of the World", and "Constitutions of Dependencies and Territories".
Although his career had always been politics and constitutional law, Oriani-Ambrosini made his living as a commercial lawyer and a businessman. Soon after his arrival in Washington, D.C., he became "of counsel" in the small but specialized international law firm of Hanna, Gaspar & Birkel, dealing with international commercial and financial transactions, including interest rates arbitrage, corporate and contractual negotiation, civil litigation in commercial matters and torts.
He began a lifelong friendship with businessman Peter J. Knop and became the General Counsel of the Washington D.C Knop Organization then consisting of TFI, SWPP Development Corp., Agricycle, Inc. and Avenir Corp. He served as the managing director of SWPP and Acrycle, dealing with venture capital and investment management, advising on the structuring of ventures, as well as waste recycling and agribusiness in a highly regulated and litigation-prone environment. Together with Knop he created a $10 million per year business which was involved in lobbying, litigation and government relations.
In 1991 Oriani-Ambrosini began what would become a life-changing relationship with Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi. In December 1990, he acted as the legal advisor for the Inkatha Freedom Party at the opening of CODESA, the two-year-long South African constitutional negotiations from apartheid to democracy. In June 1992, he sat with Buthelezi at the meeting of the UN Security Council in a meeting called by Nelson Mandela to push forward the transition to democracy. In November 1992 he drafted the Constitution of KwaZulu/Natal which was unanimously adopted by the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly as the constitution of a member state of a federation to be formed in the national negotiation process. This was the first detailed constitutional draft or proposal in the South African constitution-making process and in that process, helped to advance civil liberties such as abortion, gay rights and a ban on the death penalty, as well as second and third generation human rights which until that point were not part of the South African constitutional discourse.
For three years Oriani-Ambrosini worked full-time as the chief constitutional negotiator for the IFP and the erstwhile KwaZulu Government, and was involved in all stages and phases of the negotiation from its beginning to the end of pre-election negotiations, including the entire drafting of the 1994 interim Constitution. He played a key role in the international mediation effort led by Henry Kissinger and Lord Carrington and the negotiation of the Agreement for Reconciliation and Peace which enabled an all-inclusive democratic election in 1994. as well as the finalization of the South African Constitution.
After South Africa's first democratic elections, Buthelezi became South Africa's Minister of Home Affairs and the Leader of a minority party in Mandela's Government of National Unity. Oriani-Ambrosini was then appointed as Buthelezi's sole Cabinet Adviser. He held this position for 10 years, providing advice for all issues before Cabinet and in Parliament, including the negotiation and drafting of the final national Constitution, the adoption of hundreds of comprehensive legislative reforms and policy documents transforming almost all fields of government and civil society. He co-drafted film and publication laws, citizenship amendment laws, homosexual life partnership and customary union regulations and other reforms which carry a libertarian slant.
Oriani-Ambrosini is acknowledged as being the main, if not the sole, architect of the South African immigration reform process from 1996 to 2004. He was appointed by Buthelezi as a Member of the task force formulating the new South African immigration policy where he became the drafter of both the policy and the new legislation. He was also responsible for piloting the legislation through NEDLAC and Parliament, acting as the Ministers spokesperson in this often controversial process. He then drafted the interim immigration regulations and piloted the subsequent process of consultations for the final regulations.