MICHAEL A. DICHIO portrait
  • Assistant Professor, Political Science Department

Research Summary

My research focuses on how American judicial institutions are created and evolve over time, and how political actors, inside and outside of courts, use these institutions to influence constitutional change, federalism, and state building.

Education

  • Ph.D., Government, Cornell University
  • B.A. , Political Science & History, Boston College

Biography

Michael A. Dichio is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science. He teaches courses on Constitutional Law, Civil Rights and Liberties, Law and Politics, and American Political Institutions.

His research centers on American political and constitutional development with a focus on the U.S. Supreme Court and constitutional law. Dichio’s book, The US Supreme Court and the Centralization of Federal Authority (2018, SUNY Press) appears in SUNY Press’s American Constitutionalism series. It traces how the Court’s constitutional jurisprudence affects the growth of the federal government from the founding era forward, and how this jurisprudence persistently centralizes and consolidates the reach and scope of the federal government. His research has also appeared in Studies in American Political Development, Publius: The Journal of Federalis, Law & Policy, and Just Security, among other places.

Dichio received his Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University in 2014, and his undergraduate degree in political science and history from Boston College. Prior to joining The University of Utah, he was an assistant professor at Fort Lewis College, a public liberal arts college in Durango, Colorado.