Vincent Phillip Muñoz

Biography

Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Professor of Political Science, Concurrent Professor of Law, and the Founding Director of the Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame. He has raised more than $30,000,000 in grants, gifts, and pledges for the university.

Dr. Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy. His recent essays have explored “The Founders and the Common Good,” “The American Revolutions of 1776,” and how Straussians interpret 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 to the project 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. The second edition of his First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Bloomsbury Academic) was published in 2026 and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities. In 2019, he joined the editorial team of American Constitutional Law (12th edition, Routledge, 2026), the leading constitutional law casebooks designed for undergraduate instruction. His scholarship has been cited multiple 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).

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. from Claremont McKenna College, his M.A. from Boston College, and his Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School.