Anthony Grasso

Professor Anthony Grasso's research focuses on inequality and the development of American law, with a particular focus on criminal justice. As a
political scientist, he studies the law as a product of politics, and remains particularly attentive to how the contemporary legal system reflects and reinforces the inequalities prevalent in American social and economic life.

His research adopts an historical institutional perspective that emphasizes how ideas, interests, and institutions have interacted over the course of American history in ways that define contemporary politics. His current book project is an examination of class inequalities in the criminal justice system that studies how economic inequalities have shaped the development of the American state’s distinctive approaches to punishing street and corporate crime.

Publications:

• Grasso, Anthony. (2021). "No Bodies to Kick or Souls to Damn: The Political Origins of Corporate Criminal Liability.” Studies in American Political Development

• Grasso, Anthony. (2017). "Broken Beyond Repair: Rehabilitative Penology and American Political Development." Political Research Quarterly 70.2: 394-407.

• Grasso, Anthony (2021). "The Supreme Court Just Made It Easier to Sentence Children to Life in Prison." Common Dreams, April 29, 2021.

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• Presentation at the American Society of Criminology Conference, 2024

• Presentation at the Law and Society Association Conference, 2024

• Presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, 2023

Organizations:

• U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Assistant Professor)

• University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. Candidate)

Accomplishments:

• Forthcoming book "Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime" (2024, University of Chicago Press)

Upcoming Projects:

• Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime (book forthcoming with University of Chicago Press, 2024)

I research inequality in the legal system, with a specific focus on how ideas and ideologies about race, class, and crime have shaped the development of unequal criminal justice institutions.