Religious Liberty and the American Founding

Vincent PhillipMuñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government. 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).

• PrefaceIntroduction: Natural Rights and the First Amendment Religion ClausesPart 1 Philosophy: The Founders’ Political Philosophy of Religious LibertyChapter 1 The Founders’ First Agreement: The Natural Right of Religious Liberty Is Possessed by All IndividualsChapter 2 The Founders’ Second Agreement: Society Compact Theory, Freedom of Worship, and Religious Liberty as an Inalienable RightChapter 3 The Foundations of the Founders’ Agreements: The Founders’ Philosophies and Theologies of the Natural Right of Religious LibertyChapter 4 The Founders’ Disagreement: Natural Rights and the Separation of Church from StatePart 2 Constitutional Originalism: The Original Meanings of the Religion ClausesChapter 5 The Original Meaning of the Establishment ClauseChapter 6 The Original Meaning of the Free Exercise ClausePart 3 Constitutional Meaning: Constructing the Religion ClausesChapter 7 Natural Rights Constructions of the First Amendment’s Religion ClausesChapter 8 How the Natural Rights Constructions Would Adjudicate Actual CasesConclusion   Should We Adopt the Natural Rights Constructions?AcknowledgmentsIndex

"In Religious Liberty and the American Founding, Vincent Phillip Muñoz offers an intriguing new argument on the meaning of the religion clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. His unconventional argument is not likely to please anyone in the heated political and legal debates over religious liberty, but this book deserves a close reading from anyone interested in religious liberty juris-prudence, natural rights theory, or originalist approaches to constitutional interpretation."