Jesse Merriam is a Washington Fellow at The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life. His research focuses on the constitutional difficulties presented by the civil rights movement, including anti-discrimination and affirmative-action law.

He is currently an Associate Professor of Government and the Pre-Law Advisor at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia. Prior to that, he served for six years as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Loyola University, Maryland. He has been a Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought at The Heritage Foundation, has worked as an appellate litigator at a D.C. constitutional law firm, and has been a research associate at the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Merriam has published over a dozen academic print articles in top law-review and peer-reviewed journals, covering such diverse topics as legal conservatism, the meaning of the rule of law, church-state relations, and the theory and practice of originalist constitutional interpretation. In addition, his other publications have appeared in Law & Liberty, National Review Online, The American Conservative, American Greatness, and The Claremont Review of Books.

Merriam holds a B.A. in government from Wesleyan University, an M.A. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University, a Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University, and a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School.

Request an interview