Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court

Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-521-75595-5
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 510 g

In this important new book, Michael J. Perry examines three of the most disputed constitutional issues of our time: capital punishment, state laws banning abortion, and state policies denying the benefit of law to same-sex unions. The author, a leading constitutional scholar, explains that if a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court believes that a law violates the Constitution, it does not necessarily follow that the Court should rule that the law is unconstitutional. In cases in which it is argued that a law violates the Constitution, the Supreme Court must decide which of two importantly different questions it should address: (1) Is the challenged law unconstitutional? (2) Is the lawmakers' judgment that the challenged law is constitutional a reasonable judgment? (One can answer both questions in the affirmative.) By focusing on the death penalty, abortion, and same-sex unions, Perry provides illuminating new perspectives not only on moral controversies that implicate one or more constitutionally entrenched human rights, but also on the fundamental question of the Supreme Court's proper role in adjudicating such controversies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Perry, Michael J.

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Internationales Recht und Europarecht Internationales Recht Internationales Kriegsrecht, Territorialrecht, Humanitäres Recht

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: a partial theory of judicial review; 1. Human rights: from morality to constitutional law; 2. Constitutionally entrenched human rights, the Supreme Court, and Thayerian deference; 3. Capital punishment; 4. Same-sex unions; 5. Abortion; 6. Thayerian deference revisited; Postscript: religion as a basis of lawmaking?

Über Autor(innen)

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. He has written on American constitutional law and theory; law, morality and religion; and human rights theory in more than sixty articles and ten books, most recently Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, 2003) and Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts (Cambridge, 2007).