Scalia was Right in Smith: Why the Original Meaning of the Free Exercise Clause Does Not Require Religious Exemptions
Cornell Student Chapter
G90 Myron Taylor Hall
Ithaca, NY 14850
William G. McRoberts Professor in the Empirical Study of Law, Cornell University School of Law
Michael Heise's research focuses on bridging empirical methodologies and legal theory. He earned an A.B. from Stanford University, a J.D. from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1987.
Professor Heise served as Senior Legal Counsel to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education and later as Deputy Chief of Staff to the U.S. Secretary of Education. He entered academia in 1994 as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Indiana University School of Law, becoming Assistant Professor in 1995, and Associate Professor in 1999 before moving to Case Western Reserve University as Professor of Law. He joined the Cornell Law School faculty as Professor of Law in 2003.
The author or co-author of over one hundred scholarly articles, Professor Heise's research and teaching areas include torts, law and education policy, insurance, constitutional law, and empirical methods. Professor Heise has co-edited the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies since 2005 and is a Founding Director of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies.
Tocqueville Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies and directs Notre Dame's Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life.
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. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities.
Muñoz's current project is a scholarly monograph on the natural right of religious liberty and the original meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law.