Justin Dyer

Dean, School of Civic Leadership | Rex W. Tillerson Endowed Dean’s Chair & Jack G. Taylor Regents Professor | Founding Director of the Civitas Institute

Justin Dyer is dean of the School of Civic Leadership at The University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Rex W. Tillerson Endowed Dean’s Chair and the Jack G. Taylor Regents Professorship. He was the founding director of the Civitas Institute.

Biography

Dyer writes and teaches in the fields of American political thought, jurisprudence, and constitutionalism, with an emphasis on the perennial philosophical tradition of natural law. He is the author or editor of eight books and numerous articles, essays, and book reviews. His most recent book, with Kody Cooper, is The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding (Cambridge University Press, 2022). His previous books include C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He also is coeditor of the constitutional law casebook American Constitutional Law. He was previously a professor of political science at the University of Missouri, where he served as the founding director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. After attending the University of Oklahoma, he completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in government at The University of Texas at Austin.

Recent contributions

The Telos of Free Speech and the University 

Constitutionalism
October 7, 2025
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The Telos of Free Speech and the University 

October 7, 2025
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Civitas Outlook
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The dollar is the world's overwhelmingly dominant currency, but suffers from endemic consumer price inflation and recurring asset price inflation.

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Why Reagan Crushed the PATCO Strike

A new book demonstrates why Reagan made the decision he did and, in doing so, helps advance the current-day understanding of why Reagan was such a successful president.

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