Noah Feldman

A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone before had dreamed. Four more different men could hardly be imagined. Yet they had certain things in common. Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings on the edge of poverty. Each had driving ambition and a will to succeed. Each was, in his own way, a genius. They began as close allies and friends of FDR, but the quest to shape a new Constitution led them to competition and sometimes outright warfare. SCORPIONS tells the story of these four great justices: their relationship with Roosevelt, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It also serves as a history of the modern Constitution itself.

The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices

Scorpions

سقوط الدولة الإسلامية ونهوضها

"Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician he co-founded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning. In The Three Lives of James Madison, Noah Feldman offers an intriguing portrait of this elusive genius and the constitutional republic he created--and how both evolved to meet unforeseen challenges."--Dust jacket.

Genius, Partisan, President

The Three Lives of James Madison

"Suddenly and unpredictably, non-violent mass demonstrations and protests erupted throughout the Arabic-speaking world in the spring of 2011, as large numbers of ordinary Arabs sought to take their political fate into their own hands and shape a better future for themselves. The optimism of their aspirations and the bravery of their efforts met with sympathy and excitement around the globe. For the first time, people in countries across North Africa and the Middle East were acting on their own, wresting control away from repressive governments and the great international powers that had long supported them. Yet as we all know, the electrifying events that began in Tunisia and that swept through Egypt, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere ultimately led to something much darker - except perhaps in the place where they began. Many long-time observers of the Middle East have arrived at a consensus about what happened to the Arab spring: it was doomed to fail. The Arab world, we are told, was unready for regime change in the direction of democracy. There is some variance among the purveyors of this consensus: some attribute the predestined failure and resulting horrors to a shared - and flawed - Arab political culture; others are inclined to blame Islam; and still others point the finger at the continued interference in the region of outside imperial powers (in particular, the United States). The purpose of Noah Feldman's new book is to rescue the Arab spring from the narrative of predestined failure. Feldman readily admits that in many ways the Arab spring ultimately made most people's lives worse than they were before. The ratio of success in the aftermath of the spring 2011 events has been atrocious. Yet it has not been zero. And even where these events took a turn for the horrifically worse, those outcomes were not inevitable. In place of the narrative of inevitability, Feldman tells a different story of the arc from spring to winter. His short book - ca 50,000 words - contains five chapters. In a first introductory chapter he analyzes the basic demands made by the Arab spring protesters (who were the people who took to the streets, what did they want, who was supposed to perform the overthrow of "the regime", and what was meant to replace it?). His main claim is that across the region demands for change were vague and general, not specific and concrete, and that - surprisingly - democracy went unmentioned. The result of this vagueness was an implicit invitation to military takeover. In chapter two, Feldman turns to Egypt and examines both key moments in the Egyptian drama: the January 2011 demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo that led to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak, and the June 2013 demonstrations in that same Square that encouraged the military to overthrow the recently-elected President and Muslim Brotherhood head, Mohamed Morsi. Feldman is of the view that the people took matters into their hands in both moments - in the first instance to remove a dictator, and in the second instance - sadly - to repudiate the country's nascent constitutional democracy. Chapter three moves to Syria and considers the thorny question of who was responsible for the disastrous civil war that followed the Arab spring there. Feldman's controversial argument is that responsibility lies not with the U.S. or other past imperial powers but with Syrians themselves. Chapter four addresses the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL), claiming that although it was a dystopian political phenomenon when viewed from the outside it is best understood as a utopian, revolutionary movement that attained success locally and globally because it reflected its members' aspiration ot self-determining political action. In this way the Islamic State belongs squarely to the Arab spring moment. Lastly, in chapter five, Feldman describes the extraordinary success of Tunisia, the country where the Arab spring began. Tunisia, he claims, succeeded because its people and its leadership took political responsibility for the consequences of their actions, rather than seeking help from outside or hoping for internal forces to save them from themselves. The consequence was the compromise-driven creation of an original form of government: Islamic liberal democracy"--

A Tragedy

The Arab Winter

An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution—a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind.” But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In this groundbreaking study, Noah Feldman argues that Lincoln deliberately and recurrently violated the United States’ founding arrangements. When he came to power, it was widely believed that the federal government could not use armed force to prevent a state from seceding. It was also assumed that basic civil liberties could be suspended in a rebellion by Congress but not by the president, and that the federal government had no authority over slavery in states where it existed. As president, Lincoln broke decisively with all these precedents, and effectively rewrote the Constitution’s place in the American system. Before the Civil War, the Constitution was best understood as a compromise pact—a rough and ready deal between states that allowed the Union to form and function. After Lincoln, the Constitution came to be seen as a sacred text—a transcendent statement of the nation’s highest ideals. The Broken Constitution is the first book to tell the story of how Lincoln broke the Constitution in order to remake it. To do so, it offers a riveting narrative of his constitutional choices and how he made them—and places Lincoln in the rich context of thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln’s Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues. Includes 8 Pages of Black-and-White Illustrations

Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America

The Broken Constitution

the future of global competition

Cool war

What do we owe Iraq? America is up to its neck in nation building--but the public debate, focused on getting the troops home, devotes little attention to why we are building a new Iraqi nation, what success would look like, or what principles should guide us. What We Owe Iraq sets out to shift the terms of the debate, acknowledging that we are nation building to protect ourselves while demanding that we put the interests of the people being governed--whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, or elsewhere--ahead of our own when we exercise power over them. Noah Feldman argues that to prevent nation building from turning into a paternalistic, colonialist charade, we urgently need a new, humbler approach. Nation builders should focus on providing security, without arrogantly claiming any special expertise in how successful nation-states should be made. Drawing on his personal experiences in Iraq as a constitutional adviser, Feldman offers enduring insights into the power dynamics between the American occupiers and the Iraqis, and tackles issues such as Iraqi elections, the prospect of successful democratization, and the way home. Elections do not end the occupier's responsibility. Unless asked to leave, we must resist the temptation of a military pullout before a legitimately elected government can maintain order and govern effectively. But elections that create a legitimate democracy are also the only way a nation builder can put itself out of business and--eventually--send its troops home. Feldman's new afterword brings the Iraq story up-to-date since the book's original publication in 2004, and asks whether the United States has acted ethically in pushing the political process in Iraq while failing to control the security situation; it also revisits the question of when, and how, to withdraw.

War and the Ethics of Nation Building

What We Owe Iraq

David Frum

Jeremy Black

Norman Stone

Barry Strauss

Richard Overy

Roger Crowley

Peter Heather

Richard Miles

Jonathan Fenby

Sean McMeekin

Gregory Feifer

Andrew Preston

Morris Rossabi

Walter Russell Mead

Josef Joffe

Gabriel Gorodetsky

Michael Broers

Lincoln Paine

Mikael Wigell

Anna-Lena Laurén

Phillip Bobbitt

John H. Maurer

Fraser Nelson

Charly Salonius-Pasternak

Ett tjugotal experter utforskar i denna antologi hur vi hamnade där vi är idag men också vart vi kan tänkas vara på väg. Huvudredaktörer är Kurt Almqvist och Alexander Linklater.

Striden om framtidens historia

Geopolitikens återkomst

A bold and thought-provoking look at the future of U.S.-China relations, and how their coming power struggle will reshape the competitive playing field for nations around the world The Cold War seemingly ended in a decisive victory for the West. But now, Noah Feldman argues, we are entering an era of renewed global struggle: the era of Cool War. Just as the Cold War matched the planet’s reigning superpowers in a contest for geopolitical supremacy, so this new age will pit the United States against a rising China in a contest for dominance, alliances, and resources. Already visible in Asia, the conflict will extend to the Middle East (U.S.-backed Israel versus Chinese-backed Iran), Africa, and beyond. Yet this Cool War differs fundamentally from the zero-sum showdowns of the past: The world’s major power and its leading challenger are economically interdependent to an unprecedented degree. Exports to the U.S. account for nearly a quarter of Chinese trade, while the Chinese government holds 8 percent of America’s outstanding debt. This positive-sum interdependence has profound implications for nations, corporations, and international institutions. It makes what looked to be a classic contest between two great powers into something much more complex, contradictory, and badly in need of the shrewd and carefully reasoned analysis that Feldman provides. To understand the looming competition with China, we must understand the incentives that drive Chinese policy. Feldman offers an arresting take on that country’s secretive hierarchy, proposing that the hereditary “princelings” who reap the benefits of the complicated Chinese political system are actually in partnership with the meritocrats who keep the system full of fresh talent and the reformers who are trying to root out corruption and foster government accountability. He provides a clear-eyed analysis of the years ahead, showing how China’s rise presents opportunities as well as risks. Robust competition could make the U.S. leaner, smarter, and more pragmatic, and could drive China to greater respect for human rights. Alternatively, disputes over trade, territory, or human rights could jeopardize the global economic equilibrium—or provoke a catastrophic “hot war” that neither country wants. The U.S. and China may be divided by political culture and belief, but they are also bound together by mutual self-interest. Cool War makes the case for competitive cooperation as the only way forward that can preserve the peace and make winners out of both sides. Praise for Cool War “A timely book . . . sharp, logical and cool.”—The Economist “Noah Feldman’s dissection of the United States–China relationship is smart, balanced, and wise.”—Robert D. Kaplan, New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography “Compelling . . . Feldman’s book carries enough insight to warrant serious attention from anyone interested in what may well be the defining relationship in global affairs for decades to come.”—Kirkus Reviews “A worthwhile and intriguing read.”—The Washington Post “Masterfully elucidates China’s non-democratic/non-communist new form of government.”—Publishers Weekly

The United States, China, and the Future of Global Competition

Cool War

In view of the expanding religious diversity within American society, this study addresses the church-state conflict that threatens the nation's unity and offers solutions for reconciling the problem.

America's Church-state Problem-- and what We Should Do about it

Divided by God

A brilliant and urgent appraisal of one of the most profound conflicts of our time Even before George W. Bush gained reelection by wooing religiously devout "values voters," it was clear that church-state matters in the United States had reached a crisis. With Divided by God, Noah Feldman shows that the crisis is as old as this country--and looks to our nation's past to show how it might be resolved. Today more than ever, ours is a religiously diverse society: Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist as well as Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. And yet more than ever, committed Christians are making themselves felt in politics and culture. What are the implications of this paradox? To answer this question, Feldman makes clear that again and again in our nation's history diversity has forced us to redraw the lines in the church-state divide. In vivid, dramatic chapters, he describes how we as a people have resolved conflicts over the Bible, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the teaching of evolution through appeals to shared values of liberty, equality, and freedom of conscience. And he proposes a brilliant solution to our current crisis, one that honors our religious diversity while respecting the long-held conviction that religion and state should not mix. Divided by God speaks to the headlines, even as it tells the story of a long-running conflict that has made the American people who we are.

America's Church-State Problem--and What We Should Do About It

A history of the careers and constitutional visions of four U.S. Supreme Court Justices appointed by Franklin Roosevelt. A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America’s leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone before had dreamed. Four more different men could hardly be imagined. Yet they had certain things in common. Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings on the edge of poverty. Each had driving ambition and a will to succeed. Each was, in his own way, a genius. Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson began as close allies and friends of FDR. But the quest to shape a new Constitution led them to competition and sometimes outright warfare. Scorpions tells the story of these four great justices: their relationship with Roosevelt, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It also serves as a history of the modern Constitution itself. Praise for Scorpions “Smart and engaging.” —New York Times Book Review “Full of high-stakes intellectual drama.” —Washington Post “A first-rate work of narrative history that succeeds in bringing the intellectual and political battles of the post-Roosevelt Court vividly to life.” —Publishers Weekly

The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justice

"Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Feldman goes back to the roots of classical Islamic law, under which executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the sharia. That balance was destroyed under Ottoman rule, resulting in the unchecked executive dominance that continues to distort politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims through sharia--but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power. In a new introduction, Feldman discusses developments in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and other Muslim-majority countries since the Arab Spring and describes how Islamists must meet the challenge of balance if the new Islamic states are to succeed."--P. [4] of cover.

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State

Nel 1989, dopo la dissoluzione dell’Unione Sovietica, la Guerra fredda si concluse con la vittoria dell’Occidente. Oggi una nuova epoca di bipolarismo mondiale è alle porte: l’era della Cool war, la «guerra fresca» che opporrà Stati Uniti e Cina. Lacorsa agli alleati e alle risorse è già ben visibile in Asia orientale, ma presto si estenderà in Medio Oriente, in Africa e oltre ancora. Eppure, questa Cool war è una guerra diversa da tutte le altre. Al contrario della Guerra fredda, non è un conflitto «a somma zero», in cui la vittoria di una parte corrisponde necessariamente alla sconfitta dell’altra. La superpotenza statunitense e la sua grande rivale del XXI secolo mostrano un livello di interdipendenza economica senza precedenti.Un quarto delle esportazioni cinesi è diretto negli Stati Uniti, e l’8 per cento del macroscopico debito americano è detenuto dal governo di Pechino.Per cogliere i cambiamenti in atto e i possibili sviluppi, è necessario osservare lo scenario internazionale senza rigidità ideologiche, soffermandosi in particolare sul modello politico-economico della Cina contemporanea. Il quadro tracciato da Noah Feldman – che unisce dati, episodi di cronaca, politica comparata e teoria delle Relazioni internazionali – porta a conclusioni sorprendenti. Certo la Cina è lontana dal diventare una democrazia, ma il folgorante sviluppo economico degli ultimi anni conferisce al governo del Partito comunista un’elevata legittimità popolare. Le élite al potere non sono né impermeabili né immobili: alle carriere dei «principini» ereditari si affiancano quelle dei «meritocrati». Il proverbiale pragmatismo delle classi dirigenti è tale da temperare la corruzione e consentire una governance nel complesso responsabile. La libertà di parola è fortemente limitata, ma l’opinione pubblica ha modo di protestare e denunciare gli scandali più di quanto non si creda.La Cool war avrà implicazioni profonde non solo per i due protagonisti, ma per il mondo intero: per gli stati e i loro sistemi di governo, per le istituzioni internazionali e i diritti umani, per le multinazionali e l’economia globale. Solo intrecciando cooperazione e competizione, la Cina, gli Stati Uniti e tutti gli attori di minor rilievo potranno scongiurare i rischi di caos e instabilità, o persino di una catastrofica «guerra calda».

Cool war. Stati Uniti e Cina. Il futuro della competizione globale

Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness as Noah Feldman. His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this incisive book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the shari'a? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed--should it? Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari'a, and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power. The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State gives us the sweeping history of the traditional Islamic constitution--its noble beginnings, its downfall, and the renewed promise it could hold for Muslims and Westerners alike.

Noah Feldman

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