Luke Schafer is a graduate of Williamston, Michigan, who studied economics and constitutional studies at Notre Dame. He will attend Harvard Law School in the fall of 2023.
Schafer grew up reading the Wall Street Journal, which led him to study economics. In the spring of his sophomore year, he enrolled in the Constitutional Studies in Roman Law and Government course with Professor Tadeusz Mazurek, which covered the development of Roman civil and criminal law and jurisprudence throughout the Roman Empire.
The minor in Constitutional Studies piqued his interest, and he declared the minor shortly after the class began. He also met several students who were part of the center Tocqueville Scholarship and applied for the same program.
Within the Constitutional Studies minor, Schafer took countless courses, including the minor’s gateway course—”Constitutionalism, Law, and Politics”—with CCCG director Vincent Phillip Muñoz, a course on politics American foreign affairs in the Cold War with Fr. Bill Miscamble, and the Sequence of basic texts with Professor Patrick Deneen and Professor Muñoz.
“Professor Muñoz’s ‘Constitutionalism, Law and Politics’ class was the most important class I took at Notre Dame. Professor Muñoz expected a lot from the students, and it was the year I worked the hardest in my entire four years,” Schafer said. “It all paid off as I developed a greater appreciation for the northern regime -American while gaining a greater understanding of where he had deviated from the regime conceived by our founders. After taking this course, I knew I wanted to attend law school to study constitutional law.”
During summers during undergraduate studies, Schafer gained invaluable experience working for the Illinois Policy Institute and for Michigan State Senator Tom Barrett. Schafer also helped write an amicus brief for Women’s Health Organization Dobbs v. Jackson.
During the summer before her senior year, Schafer received a grant from the Notre Dame Kellogg Institute for International Studies to conduct international research on the constitutional process in Chile, where she had studied abroad. Schafer had just completed a constitutionalism class with Professor Muñoz and was “interested in comparing Chilean constitutionalism with American conceptions,” he explained. Her thesis, titled “Student Confidence in Chile’s Constitutional Process,” captures her experience in Chile and the conversations about constitutionalism and governance taking place in her nation.
Schafer was also accepted to the Röpke-Wojtyła Scholarship with the Catholic University of America, which provides an opportunity for graduating seniors to engage in the study of market order and Catholic social thought.
In the fall, Schafer will attend Harvard Law School. He hopes to find a way to link international law, constitutional law, Catholicism and economics in his career.
Schafer credits CCCG with “all the most formative academic experiences of my college career” at Notre Dame.
“I am deeply grateful for all the opportunities I have had through the CCCG, and I certainly would not be going to law school next year without them,” Schafer said.
Article contributed by CCCG co-editor Merlot Fogarty.
Originally Posted by at constudies.nd.edu activated May 10, 2023.
