Our Constitutional Founding: From Ideas to Institutions

Adam J. White

Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.

Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.

In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.

Gary J. Schmitt

Gary J. Schmitt is a senior fellow in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies program at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies issues related to the American presidency, the U.S. constitution and its principles, and American civic life. Dr. Schmitt also writes on national security topics.

A former minority staff director of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Dr. Schmitt was executive director of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (then known as the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board). Before joining AEI, he was executive director of the Project for the New American Century.

Dr. Schmitt is the author, coauthor, editor, and coeditor of many books. In the area of civics and constitutional studies, his books include “McCulloch v. Maryland at 200: Debating John Marshall’s Jurisprudence” (AEI Press, 2020); “The Imperial Presidency and the Constitution” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017); “Is Congress Broken? The Virtues and Defects of Partisanship and Gridlock” (Brookings Institution Press, 2017); “The Professions and Civic Life” (Lexington Books, 2016); and “Trendsetting Charter Schools: Raising the Bar for Civic Education” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).

Vincent Phillip Muñoz

Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. He is the Founding Director of ND’s Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government.

Dr. Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and 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.

An award-winning teacher and a popular lecturer, Dr. Muñoz has spoken at nearly 100 colleges and universities in the past several years. He received his B.A. at Claremont McKenna College, his M.A. at Boston College, and his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate School.