The American Constitution

“There is no country where the law can foresee everything or where institutions should take the place of reason and mores.” (Democracy in America, Vol 1, Pt 1, Ch 8).

Yuval Levin (American Enterprise Institute)

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. Levin earned his BA at American University and his MA and PhD at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. After completing his education, he served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels. In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Levin has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Commentary. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, including Tyranny of Reason: The Origins and Consequences of the Social Scientific Outlook (2001); Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy (2008); The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (2014); The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism (2016); A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream (2020); and most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again (2024).

Vincent Phillip Muñoz (Notre Dame)

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 Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government. He was educated at Claremont McKenna College (BA), Boston College (MA), and Claremont Graduate School (PhD). Muñoz is an award-winning teacher and prolific scholar. He has published numerous professional articles and book chapters, and several popular law case books, one of which is in its 12^th edition. Muñoz’s first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (2009), won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. 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). 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).