Dr. John Compton

Associate Professor, Chair, Department of Political Science

Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; Department of Political Science

Expertise: Religion and Politics; Supreme Court and Constitutional Law; U.S. Congress

Office Location: Roosevelt Hall 256

Office Hours: W 1PM-2:30PM and By Appt.

Phone: (714) 628-2762

Email: compton@chapman.edu

Scholarly Works:: Digital Commons

Education:: William Jewell College, Bachelor of Arts
Syracuse University, Master of Arts
University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D.

Biography

Dr. Compton joined the Chapman political science faculty in 2011 after completing his Ph.D. at UCLA. His teaching and research interests include American political development, constitutional law, and religion and politics. In 2012, he was awarded the Law and Society Association’s annual dissertation prize. His first book, The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution, was published by Harvard University Press in 2014. In 2015, he received the Cromwell Book Prize for excellence in scholarship in the field of American legal history by a junior scholar (for Evangelical Origins). Dr. Compton’s articles have appeared in the Review of Politics, American Political Thought, and the Journal of Supreme Court History. He is currently at work on a new book project examining American evangelicals’ impact on domestic policy in the period between the industrial revolution and the 1980s. Prior to beginning graduate school, he worked as a legislative aide to a member of Congress.

Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications: “Why the Covenant Worked: On the Institutional Foundations of the American Civil Religion.” Religions 10, no. 6 (2019). (Special issue on Civil Religion in America, Raymond J. Haberski, Jr., ed.); The Cambridge Companion to the United States Constitution (Cambridge University Press, 2018; co-edited with Karen Orren); “Sex Ed for Christians,” Review of R. Marie Griffith, Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians & Fractured American Politics and Adam Laats, Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education, Los Angeles Review of Books, April 23, 2018.; “Easing the Shoe Where It Pinches: The Lottery Case and the Demise of Dual Federalism.” Journal of Supreme Court History 40, no. 2 (2015).; “Evangelical Reform and the Paradoxical Origins of the Right to Privacy.” Maryland Law Review 75, no. 1 (2015); “What Is Originalism Good For?” (Review Essay) Tulsa Law Review 50, no. 2 (2015).; The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); “Political Theory in Institutional Context: The Case of Patriot Royalism.” (with Karen Orren) American Political Thought 3, no. 1 (2014).

Dr. John Compton

Biography

Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications

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