
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, where I also hold appointments in Trinity College and the Faculty of Law. For the 2025-26 academic year, I am the Garwood Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Located in the fields of American Politics and Public Law, my research interests span American political thought and development, constitutional law and theory, federalism, rights jurisprudence, human dignity, and constitutional design. My current book project, tentatively titled Rediscovering the Founders’ Constitution (under contract, Yale University Press), presents a reconstruction of the founding generation’s understanding of constitutionalism and constitutional politics. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, Polity, Journal of Law and Courts, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Tulsa Law Review, and multiple edited volumes. I am also the editor, with Benjamin Kleinerman and Charles Zug, of the forthcoming Beyond Checks and Balances (University of Pennsylvania Press). Previously, I was a Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri and, before that, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Program on Constitutionalism & Democracy at the University of Virginia, where I held a teaching appointment in the Department of Politics. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin (’16, Government), A.M. from the University of Chicago (’11, Social Sciences), and B.A. from the University of Wisconsin—Madison (’08, Political Science & Philosophy).