The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy

In this important new work in political and constitutional theory, Michael Perry elaborates and defends an account of the political morality of liberal democracy: the moral convictions and commitments that in a liberal democracy should govern decisions about what laws to enact and what policies to pursue. The fundamental questions addressed in this book concern (1) the grounding, (2) the content, (3) the implications for one or another moral controversy, and (4) the judicial enforcement of the political morality of liberal democracy. The particular issues discussed include whether government may ban pre-viability abortion, whether government may refuse to extend the benefit of law to same-sex couples, and what role religion should play in the politics and law of a liberal democracy.

Author: Michael J. Perry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 12/01/2009
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780521115186

About the Author
Perry, Michael J.: - Michael J. Perry holds a Robert W. Woodruff Chair at Emory University, where he teaches in the law school. Previously, Perry held the Howard J. Trienens Chair in Law at Northwestern University, where he taught for fifteen years, and the University Distinguished Chair in Law at Wake Forest University. Perry has written on American constitutional law and theory; law, morality and religion; and human rights theory in more than sixty articles and ten books, including The Idea of Human Rights; We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court; Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy; Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts; and Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court.