"serious peril" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It can be used to describe a dangerous or risky situation that is grave and potentially harmful. The phrase conveys a sense of severity and urgency. Example: Climbing Mount Everest without proper gear and training can put one in serious peril.
This puts democracy itself in serious peril.
The more serious peril, though, has to do with policy rather than politics.
"The federal government ignores state and local governments at serious peril," Mr. Corzine said.
A shortage of water is a more serious peril than any of the others mentioned in this report.
But the two researchers also found that the species they had just discovered was in serious peril.
Wang told me that he thought the Communist system in China was in serious peril, that the Party's control over China was in danger of being broken.
Coastal groups in northeast Asian waters, along with many other baleen species, were likely driven into serious perils or functional extinctions by industrial catches by Japan covering wide ranges of China and Korean EEZ within very short period in 20th century.
And yet he always avoided serious legal peril, not least because he played by the lessons imbibed from Roy Cohn.
Most important, there has been very little visibility into the actual investigation, making it difficult to judge from the outside whether Clinton or her aides are in serious legal peril.
Then, 15 months ago, serious new peril for the egrets, ibises and other denizens: nearly 1,000 gallons of heating oil got into a storm drain at a building a mile away, and ended up in the bay, killing some of the cove's mussels and coating other inhabitants.
This time Green vehemently insisted the client was running the risk of getting stuck with two illiquid properties and putting herself in serious financial peril.
