Teaching American Constitutional Law is an intensive week-long conference for early-career university faculty and advanced graduate students preparing to teach the American Constitution to undergraduates. Led by John Yoo of Berkeley Law and Vincent Phillip Muñoz of the University of Notre Dame, the seminar will combine substantive study of constitutional law with sustained attention to the challenges and opportunities of teaching constitutional government in the undergraduate classroom.
Designed especially for scholars teaching in emerging schools and programs of civic thought, constitutional studies, and American political institutions, the conference will approach the Constitution not simply as a body of legal doctrine, but as a framework of republican government rooted in political philosophy, history, constitutional text, and institutional design.
Participants will begin with the intellectual foundations of American constitutionalism, including the traditions of natural law and natural rights that shaped the founding. They will consider the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and examine ideas of equality, liberty, consent, and the purposes and limits of government. Sessions will then explore the Constitutional Convention, federalism, separation of powers, executive and legislative authority, the judiciary, individual rights, landmark Supreme Court decisions, and competing approaches to constitutional interpretation.
Throughout the week, Yoo and Muñoz will address both what to teach and how to teach it, helping participants develop syllabi, readings, assignments, and pedagogical approaches for undergraduate courses.
A field study in Philadelphia, including Independence Hall, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Constitution Center, will place these constitutional questions within their historical setting and illuminate the continuing debate over the meaning of American constitutional government.
Speaker:
John C. Yoo
John C. Yoo, JD is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he serves as Faculty Director of the Public Law and Policy Program. He is also the Thomas W. Smith Senior Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His scholarship focuses on constitutional law, presidential and executive power, national security, foreign affairs, international law, and the Supreme Court.
Yoo graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with an AB in American history in 1989 and received his JD from Yale Law School in 1992, where he served as an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Yoo has the unusual distinction of having served in all three branches of the federal government. In the judicial branch, he clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. In the legislative branch, he served as General Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995–1996. In the executive branch, he served from 2001–2003 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, working on constitutional, foreign-affairs, national-security, and terrorism issues, including the federal government’s legal response to the September 11 attacks.
Yoo has published more than 100 scholarly articles and numerous books, including The Powers of War and Peace; Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush; War by Other Means; Point of Attack; and Defender in Chief. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court co-authored with Robert Delahunty. He is also a co-author of the 2026 edition of American Constitutional Law.
Vincent Phillip Muñoz, PhD
Dr. Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Professor of Political Science, Concurrent Professor of Law, and Founding Director of the Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame. His teaching and scholarship span American constitutional law, constitutional interpretation, American political thought, political philosophy, religious liberty, and the American Founding.
Muñoz earned his BA from Claremont McKenna College, MA from Boston College, and PhD from Claremont Graduate School. At Notre Dame, he has developed a substantial program devoted to the study of constitutional government and citizenship while teaching courses in both political science and law.
Muñoz is particularly known for scholarship connecting constitutional law to the political philosophy of the American Founding. His most recent book, Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses, examines the original meanings of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses and develops an interpretation grounded in the Founders’ understanding of religious liberty as an inalienable natural right. The project was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.
His earlier books include the award-winning God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson and Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents. God and the Founders received the American Political Science Association’s Hubert Morken Award. Muñoz also serves on the editorial team for American Constitutional Law, a major undergraduate constitutional-law casebook, now in its 12th edition.
His constitutional scholarship has been cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, including Espinoza v. Montana and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia.
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