People

People

Decker, Jefferson

  • Jefferson Decker
  • Jefferson Decker
  • Associate Professor, Dept. of American Studies
  • Subfield: American Politics, Public Law
  • Click for Website

  •  Decker CV
  • Office Hours:

    By appointment.
  • Specialties:

    American Politics, Public Law, Political History
  • Bio:

    Jeff Decker, an affiliate faculty member,  writes about politics, government, and law in twentieth-century America. He is the author of The Other Rights Revolution: Conservative Lawyers and the Remaking of American Government (Oxford University Press, 2016). That book shows how a series of legal battles over property rights and the regulatory state shaped the public ideas and policy agenda of modern U.S. conservatism. He is currently working on a political history of the late-twentieth century bull market in stocks, tentatively titled Bull: The Stock Market and the Politics of Financial Security, 1974-2000. Prof. Decker's primary responsibilities reside in the Dept. of American Studies.
  • Teaching:

    Courses for major credit in Political Science
    Law and Society
    Money and Modern America
    American Conservatism
    U.S. Life during the Cold War

    Courses in American Studies
    Introduction to American Studies
    Approaches to American Studies: Messing with Nature
    Decade in American Culture: the 1980s
    Junior Seminar in American Studies: Law, Courts and Justice in the United States

    Graduate Course in Political Science
    American Political Development
  • Publications:

    BOOK

    The Other Rights Revolution: Conservative Lawyers and the Remaking of American Government (Oxford University Press, 2016)

    ARTICLES and ESSAYS

    “The Liberal’s Imagination: ‘The Problem of American Conservatism,’ Then and Now.” In David Greenberg, Moshik Temkin, and Mason Williams, eds., Alan Brinkley: A Life in History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

    "Deregulation, Reagan-style," The Regulatory Review, March 13, 2019.

    "Pacific Views: Property Rights, the Regulatory State, and American Conservatism," Journal of Policy History 28, vol. 4 (2016): 654-679.

    "Running on Empty," The Nation Online (August 4, 2016)

    “Legal Conservatism,” entry in the Oxford University Encyclopedia of American Political, Policy, and Legal History, Donald T. Crichtlow and Philip R. VanderMeer, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2011)

    “Operation Rollback.” The Nation (October 5, 2009)

    “Lords of Misrule.” The Nation (October 27, 2008)

    “Politics as Usual: How Republicans Came to Rule the South.” Boston Review (May/June 2006)

    EDITED COLLECTION

    A Way Out: America’s Ghettos and the Legacy of Racism. Co-editor, with Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers (Princeton University Press, 2003)