Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a NYU Professor of Law who was appointed in 2003 by the Coalition Provisional Authority as chief U.S. advisor to Iraq for the writing of the country’s new constitution. Feldman is an Orientalist, someone interpreting Islamic/Arab society. On 7 Dec 2006, Harvard Law School announced that Feldman would join the Harvard faculty .

Fledman clerked for Judge Harry Edwards, who was appointed by Carter, and David Souter.

Noah Feldman

Comment by Scott Ritter

On 16 March 2005, Scott Ritter was interviewed by Dennis Bernstein on KPFA's Flashpoints program and had this to say about Feldman:

The Shia contend that they won more than 60% of the vote. If in fact the Shia did win 60% of the vote, they now control a national assembly that is charged – it has one task only – that is, in August 2005 to vote on a Constitution for Iraq. Now, the United States presented the interim government of Iyad Allawi with a draft Constitution that was put together by a New York Univ. scholar named Noah Feldman. Noah Feldman is an Islamist, he knows Islam, he is also an orthodox Jew. Now, I am not saying this from an anti-semitic standpoint, … But I know Iraq very well; to have an American Jew draft the Iraqi constitution in which is stated that Islam will not be the state religion is an insult to the sensibilities of all Iraqis.

If you go to Iraq today, if you have contact with Iraqis, and you mention Noah Feldman's name they know who he is – most Americans don't. Almost every Iraqi does, and they know what he did – he drafted a constitution, which if the Shia have their way, will be rejected. Now, if the Shia reject this constitution it also rejects all the interim law that was passed by Paul Bremer that is still in place today. There is no Iraqi government governing Iraq; the law that is governing Iraq was passed by Paul Bremer, and gives the United States total control of the country. And we have total control as we speak today. If this constitution is voted out, not only will the Shia bring in a theocracy based on Islamic law, but also they will reject the transitional law that is in place today. This is what the U.S. cannot afford to happen; we say that we want democracy in Iraq, but when democracy occurs, and the majority wins, we cannot respect the result.

Quotes

On Lebanon

...the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah owe much of their present standing to elections calls into question the viability of Middle Eastern democracy as a peaceful practice.

For its part, Israel is gambling that the right strategy is to make the people who elected Hamas and a government that includes Hezbollah reckon the costs of their representatives' recklessness. That is why Israel has targeted not only Hezbollah leaders and strongholds but has also bombed infrastructure that sustains daily life for everybody in Lebanon. From Israel's standpoint, this is no longer a fight with nonstate terrorists who are holding their fellow citizens hostage to their tactics. It is, rather, war between Israel and countries that are pursuing (or tolerating) violent policies endorsed (or at least accepted) by their electorates.

Democracy means that you cannot blame someone else for troubles caused by your own government.

... elections in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories owe much to America's democracy agenda...

Affiliations

• Council on Foreign Relations - Adjunct Senior Fellow
• New America Foundation – Fellow
• Coalition Provisional Authority (2003 – 2004) Legal expert
• New York University
• Yale Univ.

Contact, References and Resources

Contact

New York University School of Law

Vanderbilt Hall

40 Washington Square South, Room 411C

New York, NY 10012-1099

Tel: (212) 998-6711

Email: noah.feldman@nyu.edu

NYU webpage: www.law.nyu.edu/faculty/profiles/fulltime/feldmann.html

Resources

Feldman articles/books

• Noah Feldman, "Islamist Democracies: The West’s Worst Nightmare?", The Globalist, 23 November 2003.
• Noah Feldman, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, Farrar Straus & Giroux (2003).

External Resources

• Bradford Plumer, "What We Owe Iraq: An Interview with Noah Feldman", Mother Jones, 16 January 2005.
• Becky Branford, "US legal legacy for Iraqi economy", BBC Online, 7 April 2005. (surprisingly the article doesn't mention Feldman by name, but it mentions the scope and effect of his work.)