In his new book, Emory Law Professor Michael J. Perry reflects that grotesque inhumanities leading to the deaths of well over one million people made the 20th century the bloodiest in human existence. Yet this period also offered a heartening story of the emergence, in international law, of the morality of human rights.



Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts (Cambridge University Press 2007), is Perry's ninth and the first to come out of the project he directs for Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR), titled the Moral and Religious Foundations of Law.



The book pursues three important, related inquiries regarding the moral and religious foundations of human rights:



* There is undeniably a religious ground for the morality of human rights. But is there a nonreligious (secular) ground for the morality of human rights?

* What is the relation between the morality of human rights and the law of human rights? Here, Perry discusses the controversial issues of capital punishment, abortion, and same-sex unions.

* What is the proper role of courts, in a liberal democracy, in protecting - and therefore in interpreting - constitutionally entrenched human rights? In considering this question, special attention is paid to the Supreme Court and how it should rule on hot button issues such as capital punishment and abortion. Toward a Theory of Human Rights makes a significant contribution both to human rights studies and to constitutional theory.



"I hope this book will be received as a constructive contribution toward the `theory' of human rights," said Perry, a CSLR senior fellow. In the book's summation, he writes, "The challenge is not to deal with these issues in a non-controversial way; the challenge is to deal with them in a way that advances the conversation and thereby invites and facilitates further productive conversation."



Reviewer Stephen Gardbaum, professor of law at UCLA, describes Perry's book as "an eloquent and compelling contribution to the development of a comprehensive theory of human rights."



M. Cathleen Kaveny, professor of law and professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, says in her review, "His thesis - that the regime of human rights ultimately needs a religious ground - is indisputably controversial. But his argument cannot be ignored by any scholar working at the intersection of faith, law and morality."



Perry is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. He published his first book, on American constitutional rights, in 1982. "That book led me to think about the relationship between morality and law - in particular, constitutional (fundamental) law. Eventually, I began to write about what I call the morality of human rights - which is the morality that grounds the law of human rights." His sixth book, published in 1989, was titled, "The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries."



This latest book "is a continuation of my effort to contribute to a fuller understanding of the morality of human rights and its relationship to the law of human rights," said Perry.



An early draft of the book was the subject of a two-day roundtable sponsored by the CSLR in the spring of 2005. Scholars in law, philosophy, and theology from Emory and other U.S. universities attended the event to comment on the work in progress.



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The Center for the Study of Law and Religion is home to world-class scholars and forums on the religious foundations of law, politics, and society. It offers first-rank expertise on how the teachings and practices of Christianity, Judaism and Islam have shaped and can continue to transform the fundamental ideas and institutions of our public and private lives. The scholarship of CSLR faculty provides the latest perspectives, while its conferences and public forums foster reasoned and robust public debate.