Vincent Phillip Muñoz

Tocqueville Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law

Office: 2032 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
Phone: 574-631-0489
Email: vmunoz@nd.edu
Website: https://politicalscience.nd.edu/people/vincent-phillip-munoz/
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Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the Founding Director of ND’s Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government. Under his leadership the programs have raised over $20,000,000 in grants, gifts, and pledges.

Dr. Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and the American Founding. He won a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to support his most recent book, Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses (2022), published by the University of Chicago Press. Articles related the project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of Constitutional Law.

Dr. Muñoz’s first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities. In 2019, he joined the editorial team of American Constitutional Law (11th edition, Routledge, 2020), the leading constitutional law casebooks designed for undergraduate instruction. His scholarship has been cited numerous times in church-state Supreme Court opinions, most recently by Justice Alito in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021) and by both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas in Espinoza v. Montana (2020).

Dr. Muñoz is a noted expert on the political philosophy of the American Founding and, in particular, James Madison. His most recent publications have explored the Founders’ understanding of religious establishments and (with his former student, Kate Hardiman Rhodes, how the modern Supreme Court has reconceived what an establishment of religion is.

An award-winning teacher and a popular lecturer, Dr. Muñoz has spoken at over 100 colleges and universities in the past several years. He received his B.A. at Claremont McKenna College, his M.A. at Boston College, and his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate School.

Scholarship

Books

• God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Religious Liberty and The American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases & Documents. Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. revised edition, 2015.

Refereed Journal Articles, Law Review Articles & Refereed Book Chapters 

• "Two Concepts of Religious Liberty: The Natural Rights and Moral Autonomy Approaches to the Free Exercise of Religion," American Political Science Review 110, no. 2 (2016), pp. 369-81. 
• "If Religious Liberty Does Not Mean Exemptions, What Might It Mean? The Founders' Constitutionalism of the Inalienable Rights of Religious Liberty," Notre Dame Law Review 91, no. 4 (2016), pp. 1387-1417. 
• "How the Founders Agreed about Religious Freedom but Disagreed about the Separation of Church and State," with Kevin Vance, in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Politics in the U.S., ed. Barbara McGraw (Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), pp. 85-97. 
• "Church & State in the Founding-era States," American Political Thought 4 (2015), pp. 1-38.
• "The Founding Fathers' Competing Visions for the Proper Separation of Church and State" in Religious Freedom in America: Constitutional Roots and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Allen D. Hertzke (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), pp. 53-68.
• "Introduction," in Religious Liberty and The American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases & Documents, ed. Vincent Phillip Muñoz (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Litttlefield, 2013), pp. 1-12.

Areas of Expertise

• American Constitutional Law
• Church & State