Frank Anechiarico ’71, the Maynard-Knox Professor of Government and Law, is the editor of a new book on public ethics. Legal but Corrupt: A New Perspective on Public Ethics was published last week by Lexington/Rowman & Littlefield.
Anechiarico wrote the book’s introduction and conclusion and contributed two chapters. He is the author of “Racialized policing in New York City: The NYPD and Stop, Question, Frisk” and co-authored, with Steffan Andersson of Sweden’s Linnaeus University, “Shaping the State to Private Purposes: A Comparison of Conflicts of Interest in the United States and Sweden.”
According to the publisher’s description, the “book argues…that the political community and scholars alike have underestimated the extent of corruption in the United States and elsewhere” and that “there is a class of behaviors and institutions that are…accepted as legitimate by statute and practice, but they inflict very real social, economic, and political damage.”
Legal but Corrupt “explains why it is important to identify legally accepted corruption and provides a series of examples of corruption using this perspective.”
Michael Johnston of Colgate University called Legal but Corrupt “an important and provocative book.” Loyola University’s John Dehn said the book “brings the theory and study of public integrity into the 21st century.”
