Vincent Phillip Muñoz
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is an American political scientist and the Tocqueville Professor of Political Science, as well as a Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of the Notre Dame Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government.
Education: He earned a BA from Claremont McKenna College in 1993, an MA from Boston College in 1995, and a PhD from Claremont Graduate University in 2001.
Muñoz studies the founding principles of the United States, especially religious liberty and the separation of church and state. He has written two books on these topics. God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (2009) examines how three Founding Fathers viewed religion in public life and how their ideas relate to modern issues like school prayers and funding of religious institutions. The book won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association in 2011.
Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses (2022) argues that religious liberty is an inalienable natural right and presents a natural-rights interpretation of the First Amendment. It has been praised by several reviewers for connecting founders’ ideas with the text of the First Amendment.
Muñoz has written influential articles, including "James Madison’s Princeton of Religious Liberty" (2003) and "Two Concepts of Religious Liberty" (2016). He also edits constitutional law casebooks for classroom use and is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.
In 2017 Muñoz invited Charles Murray to Notre Dame, arguing that the invitation was a matter of free speech despite objections from some faculty and students.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:35 (CET).