Michael John Perry specializes in three areas: (1) American constitutional law and theory, with an emphasis on constitutional rights and on the courts’ proper role—especially the U.S. Supreme Court’s proper role—in protecting constitutional rights;
(2) law, morality, and religion, with an emphasis on the proper role of religiously based morality in the law and politics of liberal democracy; and (3) human rights theory, with an emphasis on the morality and law of international human rights.

Perry is the author of eleven books and of over sixty articles and essays. His books include Love and Power: The Role of Religion and Morality in American Politics (Oxford, 1991), The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford, 1998), We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court (Oxford, 1999), Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, 2003), Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts (Cambridge, 2007); Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court (Cambridge, 2009); and The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, 2010). Perry is presently writing a book on the morality and law of international human rights, to be published by Routledge.

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 fifteen years (1982-97). He then held the University Distinguished Chair in Law at Wake Forest University (1997-2003). Perry began his teaching career at the Ohio State University College of Law (1975-82) and has taught as a visiting professor at several law schools, including Yale (1978-79), Tulane (1987), New York Law School (1990), the University of Tokyo (1991), the University of Alabama (2005), and the University of Western Ontario, Canada (2009).

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 teaches a course on the morality and law of international human rights both to law students and to graduate students at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies.

Perry was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He did his undergraduate work at Georgetown University, where he majored in philosophy and minored in religion (A.B., 1968), and studied law at Columbia University (J.D., 1973). He then served as law clerk to U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein (1973-74); a year later, he served as law clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler (1974-75). In 1999, Perry was awarded an LL.D. (honoris causa) by St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota.

Perry is married to Sarah Anne O’Leary, a public health specialist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Michael and Sarah have two sons: Daniel (b. 1989) and Gabriel (b. 1991).