He was the brother of Aldo Casalinuovo, Calabrian criminal lawyer, elected in the I and III legislatures to the Chamber of Deputies for the Block of Freedom and the People's Monarchist Party), for 15 years president of the National Bar Council, and father of Aldo Casalinuovo jr., a criminal lawyer.

Enrolled in the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity immediately after returning from captivity on German soil (1945), he joined the division of Palazzo Barberini (1947), first militated in the PSDI and, in 1959 merged with the Unitary Movement of Socialist Initiative in the Italian Socialist Party which had deliberated its autonomist policy in the Venice Congress, after the events in Poland and Hungary.

He was vice president of the parliamentary group of the PSI until 3 July 1981 and, until the same date, he was a member of the Justice Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, participating in the most important debates both on the Government's bills and on the legislative proposals of parliamentary initiative.

He has been involved in forensic associations, covering, among other assignments, the position of national vice president of the Union of Italian Criminal Chambers and that, for eleven years, of president of the criminal chamber of the province of Catanzaro, which he founded with other colleagues in 1988.

He was director for many years of the magazine "Calabria Giudiziaria", founded in 1919 by his father Giuseppe Casalinuovo, and he was a contributor to legal reviews, newspapers and political periodicals.