Associate Professor of Government; Pre-Law Advisor
Dr. Jesse Merriam
Email: jrmerriam@phc.edu
Phone: 540-441-8232
Educational Background:
Ph.D. in Political Science and M.A. in Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University
J.D. from George Washington University Law School
B.A. in Government, Wesleyan University
Time at PHC: 2020 to present
Dr. Merriam teaches courses in constitutional law, legal theory, and legal reasoning at Patrick Henry College. With advanced degrees in philosophy, judicial politics, and law, he brings an interdisciplinary perspective to his teaching and scholarship. He has also developed the college’s pre-law program and, as a former LSAT tutor, has helped produce students who consistently achieve among the highest LSAT scores in the country, with recent graduating classes averaging around 170. Prior to joining PHC, he served as an assistant professor of political science at Loyola University Maryland, practiced as an appellate litigator in Washington, D.C., and worked as a research associate at the Pew Research Center.
Dr. Merriam has published dozens of articles on the civil rights regime, affirmative action, legal conservatism, and originalism. His scholarship examines the structure, development, and normative foundations of modern civil rights law, with particular attention to disparate-impact reasoning and diversity-based decisionmaking. His recent work emphasizes the structural durability of affirmative action, arguing that it is likely to persist despite sustained legal and political challenges—and that this persistence reflects the deep logic of the regime rather than mere political contingency. He has emerged as a leading scholar of the modern civil rights regime, with a particular focus on its structural logic and durability.
In 2019–2020, Dr. Merriam was selected as the Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought at the Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics. He currently serves as a research fellow at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.
Dr. Merriam lives in a 1750s stone farmhouse in Frederick County, Maryland, with his wife and six children. Outside the classroom, he is actively involved in his local community, coaching regional youth baseball and working the family homestead.