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I wonder if atheists believe that the Constitution is subservient to the moral law, and if so on what basis, since they deny the transcendent foundation of the moral law.

You can’t reason with an atheist, Diamond. There is simply no common ground of discourse. An atheist would deny this, but the fact is they are in a flight from reality, to a “second reality” of their own preference. Moreover, this entails holding reason and evidence in contempt on a systematic basis. Lies and what Cicero called "the refusal to apperceive" are ever so much more "convenient."

Eric Voegelin gives an excellent analysis of the syndrome:

The Second Realities [that]... cause the breakdown of rational discourse are a comparatively recent phenomenon. They have grown during the modern centuries...until they have reached, in our own time, the proportions of a social and political force which in more gloomy moments may look strong enough to extinguish our civilization — unless, of course, you are an ideologist yourself and identify civilization with the victory of Second Reality.
The [grotesqueness of Second Realities]... must not be confused with the comic or humorous. The seriousness of the matter will be best understood, if one visions the concentration camps of totalitarian regimes and the gas chambers of Auschwitz in which the grotesqueness of opinion becomes the murderous reality of action.

A-G and I take a page from Voegelin in our own analysis of the problem (in our book, Timothy) [The dramatis personae: TFB is the First Bird; TSB is the Second Bird; F is “brother” Frog; and T is St. Timothy]:

TSB: I was … wondering: Is it possible to reason about the nature of true existents of reality — which might include such noncorporeal things as, say, individual human rights — with an opponent of different religious persuasion, or of differing scientific or social philosophy, and make a persuasive case that objectively establishes their reality to that person’s satisfaction? To that question, I think the answer is: Yes, that is possible.
But what of the case where you want to persuade an opponent [e.g.., an atheist] who is in deliberate revolt against First Reality — against the very idea of reality as a given constituted order of being? That, I think, is simply not possible: You cannot make any objective case to such a person. His revolt against the natural order constitutes a flight from reality and reason itself, for the operations of reason are ultimately premised on that order. Such a person has deliberately chosen to inhabit a “dream world” designed to be hermetically sealed against any impressions or experiences that come from “outside.”
His system is relentlessly self-referring and self-contained. Nonconforming data are simply screened out as illusory or nonexistent. The self-selected dream world that enfolds him is, of course, a “second reality.” It was adopted precisely because his existence in “first reality” has somehow become unbearable for him.
F: So what? If someone wants to live in a dream world, that doesn’t have anything to do with me!
TFB: Let Sister Bird finish, Froggie — and you’ll see that it does involve you and everyone else, too.
TSB: Yes it does involve you, Froggie — whether you create a dream world for yourself, or get drawn into some other person’s dream world. If history tells us anything it is that many constructors of Second Realities cannot be satisfied unless or until the rest of humanity accepts and approves their construction. And to this end, they are willing to employ certain means that, on first-reality grounds, would be excluded as illegitimate. Such means cover the ground from polemical propaganda, through frank censorship or coercion, up to outright, mass-scale violence.
Karl Marx, for instance, absolutely forbade all questions regarding his system; e.g., “dialectical materialism,” originally suggested to him by Hegel’s dialectical system of absolute science. You either have to accept it uncritically, whole-cloth, as “received doctrine”; or you become its “enemy.” Just consider how much mass-scale violence has been committed in post-Enlightenment world history, in the name of Karl Marx.
F: That’s ridiculous! How do you get from a “dream” to “mass-scale violence?” Dreams are of no consequence.
T: Well, that’d be true if, according to Brother Frog, dreams were merely “epiphenomena,” and thus incapable of being causative factors.
TSB: Indeed, Timothy! But Froggie, these kinds of dreams can become very real, and actually have. To give the names of some dreamers who have had stupendous social consequences: Lenin, Stalin; Hitler; Mao; other names you can supply for yourself....
The extraordinarily perceptive philosopher of history Eric Voegelin noted the spiritual implications involved in flights from first reality:

...a lack of seriousness in spiritual matters is by no means harmless. For a society cannot renounce the order of the spirit without destroying itself, and when the institutions which are to serve the life of the spirit...cease to be serious, then their function will be taken over by men and institutions who do take their work seriously.... Indeed, one cannot realize a Second Reality, but the spiritual closure within it is a real phenomenon and has an actual effect on reality. In this regard the structure of the pneumopathological case [i.e., the case of a diseased spirit] doesn’t differ from that of the psychopathological [i.e., the case of the diseased mind]: the delusions of a paranoid person ... correspond to no reality, but the delusions are real and the actions of the paranoid enter into reality.... [The constructors of Second Realities have] overlaid the reality of [human] existence with another mode [in which] the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared....

In so many words, it seems to me that what Voegelin is describing here boils down to the dreamer’s complete denial and refusal of the human condition — a denial which sets up a fertile ground for “existential alienation.” All of which seem to arise from a deeply-felt sense of profound anxiety about the terms of human existence.
T: Fascinating suggestion, little sister.
TFB: Indeed.
F: I don’t have the least clue what you’re talking about here, lady frog! Try again, will you?
TSB: Well, let’s put it this way: A human being is never consulted about the terms of his coming into the world, nor of his departure from it. It is the essence of the human condition that a man is neither the origin nor the “end” — in the sense of telos, meaning a purpose, or goal — of himself. Meanwhile, in between birth and death, there is a litany of evils to which mortal human nature is subject. “The life of man is really burdened,” as Voegelin put it, “with the well-known miseries enumerated by Hesoid. We remember his list of hunger, hard work, disease, early death, and the fear of the injustices to be suffered by the weaker man at the hands of the more powerful — not to mention the problem of Pandora.”
Notwithstanding, Voegelin continued, “as long as our existence is undeformed by phantasies, these miseries are not experienced as senseless. We understand them as the lot of man, mysterious it is true, but as the lot he has to cope with in the organization and conduct of his life, in the fight for survival, the protection of his dependents, and the resistance to injustice, and in his spiritual and intellectual response to the mystery of existence.”
Now the “lot of man” as just given is a description of the condicio humana, the human condition. It is the very basis for the idea of a common humanity, or of a brotherhood of mankind. It is my conjecture that it is possible for a person to take great umbrage at this condicio humana, to deplore and reject it, to see it as a grievous insult to one’s own assumed personal autonomy; and so to take flight in an alternative reality that can be structured more according to one’s own wishes, tastes, and desires. And thus, a Second Reality is born.
As for me, all things considered, I’ll take First Reality, the Great Hierarchy of Being — God–Man–World–Society — any day, any time. I believe that human beings were put in this world to be creative actors, even if they never get to design the stage on which the acting (and observing) is being done, nor to control the writing of the script by which the play unfolds. And meanwhile they not only act, but suffer the actions of other actors or forces — personal or natural — from outside themselves.
Yet to recognize all this is to recognize the very basis of one’s own existential humanity. And to realize that the lot of any other man is no different. To be part and participant of this divinely constituted, dynamic “sub-whole” of a yet greater Whole is a glorious privilege. To go hole up in a Second Reality, to me, would be to lose one’s reason and probably one’s soul as well....

[End of excerpt]

I think the atheist believes that there is no human freedom unless a man can get “free” of God. Now a person like me, a believer in God, believes there is neither freedom nor reason — or sanity — without God. So you see, there is no way that a common ground can exist between the atheist and the theist such that any agreement could ever be reached, and not just on the question of God, but probably on any question at all.

Bottom line, the difference is the atheist wants freedom from something; the theist wants freedom for something. That is a huge psychological difference.

But the atheist thinks that if he can bump off God and His Moral Law, then he himself can be “the measure of all things.” The theist would reply: You can’t “kill God.” You can’t “kill” His Moral Law either: It is built into the nature of things, including the human soul. As Christians suspect the atheist will discover one day; for God’s Moral Law is the very criterion of the Last Judgment to which every human soul is subject.

In closing, I have no answer for your musings at the top. One cannot reason with people who have lost their reason, or have performed a sort of spiritual self-lobotomy. If one debates such folks at all, it is only for the possible benefit of Lurkers, of the by-standers….

Thanks for letting me run on so, Diamond! And thank you so much for writing!