Should we (the citizens of a liberal democracy, acting through our elected representatives) retain capital punishment, or abolish it? Should we ban abortion or permit it? Should we ban physician-assisted suicide or permit it? Should we refuse to extend the benefit of law to same-sex unions, or should we create civil unions for same-sex couples... and should such unions be called "marriages"? What is the proper role of religiously grounded morality in a liberal democracy?

Michael John Perry specializes in three areas:

• American constitutional law and theory, with an emphasis on constitutional rights and on the courts' role — especially the U.S. Supreme Court's role — in protecting constitutional rights
• Law, morality and religion, with an emphasis on the role of religiously based morality in the law and politics of liberal democracy
• Human rights theory
  

Perry is the author of more than 60 articles and essays and 11 books, including Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, 2003), Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts (Cambridge, 2007) and Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court (Cambridge, 2009). His 11th book, The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2010.

Since 2003, Perry has held a Robert W. Woodruff University Chair at Emory University, where he teaches in the law school. A Woodruff Chair is the highest honor Emory University bestows on a member of its faculty. Before coming to Emory, Perry was the inaugural occupant  of the Howard J. Trienens Chair in Law at Northwestern University (1990-97), where he taught for 15 years (1982-97). Perry then held the University Distinguished Chair in Law at Wake Forest University (1997-2003).

During the 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic years, Perry is splitting his time between Emory University and the University of San Diego, where, as the University Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law and Peace Studies, he is teaching a course on the law and morality of international human rights to law students and to graduate students at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies.