Academics

The core mission of the Center is to educate, mentor, and support students during their academic careers at Notre Dame and beyond. In the classroom, we teach students the principles of constitutional government, the American political tradition, U.S. constitutional law, comparative constitutionalism, and more. Outside of the classroom, we give students opportunities to meet with prominent academics, politicians, judges, and other leaders. We also promote constructive, civil dialogue on pressing issues of politics, public policy, culture, law, and religion through weekend colloquia, debates, and other events. In all of this work, we seek to build a rich community of students, faculty, and staff who pursue the truth together in charity.

“Every Catholic University, as a university, is an academic community which, in a rigorous and critical fashion, assists in the protection and advancement of human dignity… It possesses that institutional autonomy necessary to perform its functions and guarantees its members academic freedom, so long as the rights of the individual person and of the community are preserved within the confines of the truth and the common good.”

-Saint John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (1990)

Undergraduate Education

Our core undergraduate programs pre-existed the founding of the Center. Launched in 2012, the Potenziani Minor in Constitutional Studies educates Notre Dame students in the enduring principles of constitutional government and ideas and institutions of a free society. Started a few years later, our Tocqueville Fellowship Program engages a select group of students through high-level extracurricular programming. Both initiatives seek to cultivate thoughtful and virtuous citizens and future leaders in politics, law, academia, industry, and the Church.

Learn more about our programs for undergraduates.

Graduate Education

The Center provides particular support and mentorship to Notre Dame Political Science PhD students concentrating in Constitutional Studies. However, we also offer academic, professional development, and funding opportunities to a wide range of graduate and law students at Notre Dame.

Learn more about our work with graduate students.

High School Education

Starting in Summer 2026, and in partnership with Notre Dame's Office of Pre-College Programs, the Center is offering an intensive 10-day seminar for rising high school seniors that explores the principles of the American founding, their development, and the extent to which they have been realized over the course of American history. 

Learn more about our Leadership Seminar for high school students.