Background
Kousser, Joseph Morgan was born on October 7, 1943 in Lewisburg, Tennessee, United States. Son of Joseph Maximillian and Alice Holt (Morgan) Kousser.
(Challenging recent trends both in historical scholarship ...)
Challenging recent trends both in historical scholarship and in Supreme Court decisions on civil rights, J. Morgan Kousser criticizes the Court's "postmodern equal protection" and demonstrates that legislative and judicial history still matter for public policy. Offering an original interpretation of the failure of the First Reconstruction (after the Civil War) by comparing it with the relative success of the Second (after World War II), Kousser argues that institutions and institutional rules--not customs, ideas, attitudes, culture, or individual behavior--have been the primary forces shaping American race relations throughout the country's history. Using detailed case studies of redistricting decisions and the tailoring of electoral laws from Los Angeles to the Deep South, he documents how such rules were designed to discriminate against African Americans and Latinos. Kousser contends that far from being colorblind, Shaw v. Reno (1993) and subsequent "racial gerrymandering" decisions of the Supreme Court are intensely color-conscious. Far from being conservative, he argues, the five majority justices and their academic supporters are unreconstructed radicals who twist history and ignore current realities. A more balanced view of that history, he insists, dictates a reversal of Shaw and a return to the promise of both Reconstructions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807824313/?tag=2022091-20
Kousser, Joseph Morgan was born on October 7, 1943 in Lewisburg, Tennessee, United States. Son of Joseph Maximillian and Alice Holt (Morgan) Kousser.
AB, Princeton University, 1965; Master of Philisophy, Yale University, 1968; Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, 1971; Master of Arts, University of Oxford, England, 1984.
Instructor, California Institute Technology, Pasadena, 1969-1971;
associate professor, California Institute Technology, Padadena, 1975-1979;
professor, California Institute Technology, Padadena, since 1979. Visiting professor University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1980, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981-1982, University of Oxford, 1984-1985, Claremont Graduate School, 1993. Expert witness Minority Voting Rights Cases.
Researcher.
(Challenging recent trends both in historical scholarship ...)
Member Organisation American Historians, American History Association, Social Sciences History Association, Southern History Association.
Married Sally Ann Ward, June 1, 1968. Children: Rachel Meredith, Thaddeus Benjamin.