Release date: April 4, 2003
Contact: Elaine Justice, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0643 or ejustic@emory.edu

Emory Law School Names Noted Legal Scholar as Woodruff Professor

Eminent legal scholar Michael J. Perry has been named Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law, beginning in the fall of 2003, pending approval by the university's Board of Trustees. Perry, one of the nation's leading authorities on the relationship of morality to law, comes to Emory from Wake Forest University, where he holds the University Distinguished Chair in Law.

"For the last 20 years, Michael Perry has been one of the nation's leading constitutional law scholars," said Thomas C. Arthur, dean of Emory Law School, in announcing the appointment. "No contemporary scholar in his field has probed more deeply the issues of law and morality, or the dilemmas presented by using moral values to interpret the individual rights provisions of the Constitution."

"One of the major draws for Michael Perry is Emory's Law and Religion Program," says Interim Provost Howard O. Hunter. Perry will be a welcome addition to the program, which already has a nationally-known group of scholars who examine issues ranging from religious human rights to the pros and cons of religious proselytism.

Perry's work has focused on three areas: American constitutional law, the proper role of religiously grounded morality in American law and politics, and the morality of human rights.

Arthur says that Perry will complement Emory's already diverse roster of public law faculty. He also expects Perry's work will strengthen "bridges between the law school and other parts of the university that are concerned with moral theory."

John Witte Jr., Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics, who chaired the Woodruff selection committee, shares that enthusiasm. "He is quintessentially interdisciplinary," Witte says of Perry. "He has brought legal, political, social and moral theory into a rare and powerful combination."

Witte says Perry's work in law and religion "has mapped a great deal of the moral and religious architecture of human rights discourse in both American constitutional and international law. Human rights has been an important topic of discourse on campus and in the law school particularly. Perry's appointment will be key to that initiative."

The author of nine books, published by Oxford, Cambridge and Yale university presses, Perry has written on a broad range of the most contentious issues of American law and politics.

He first came to national attention in American legal circles with his 1982 book, "The Constitution, the Courts and Human Rights: An Inquiry into the Legitimacy of Constitutional Policymaking by the Judiciary."

Perry's ideas on constitutional interpretation and his defense of judicial activism by the courts were often cited by those opposed to President Ronald Reagan's ultimately failed nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Perry's exploration of judicial activism led him to turn his attention to moral philosophy and its relation to law. He explored this theme in "Morality, Politics and Law" (1988),while "Love and Power" (1991) addressed the relationship between religion, law and public discourse, which he continued in "Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives" (1997). In "We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court" (1999), Perry examined whether the court has usurped the political process on issues ranging from affirmative action to homosexuality and abortion. In "The Idea of Human Rights" (1998), he asked whether there are fundamental human rights that are universal and criticizes several versions of so-called "moral relativism."

His forthcoming book, "Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy," argues that political reliance on religious faith violates neither the Constitution's establishment clause nor the morality of liberal democracy. The book also addresses three issues at the center of American public life: school vouchers, same-sex marriage and abortion.

"The issues that are of the greatest interest and concern to me--the relation between law and religion and to human rights studies--are subjects that Emory Law School and the university as a whole are tangibly committed to pursuing," said Perry of his appointment. "I am especially eager to work with the students who come to Emory in part because of its institutional commitment to these ideas."

Perry will become the law school's second Woodruff professor, which is the highest honor Emory can bestow on a faculty member. The law school's other Woodruff professor is comparative and international legal scholar Harold J. Berman, who came to Emory in 1985 after a distinguished career at Harvard Law School.

Prior to joining the law faculty at Wake Forest, Perry was the Howard J. Trienens Professor of Law at Northwestern University from 1990-1997. He also has taught as a visiting professor and guest scholar at Yale Law School, the University of Tokyo School of Law, and at Trinity College (Dublin) School of Law.

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