Books

After 9/11, Noah’s dual training in constitutional law and Islamic thought – and his appointment as a senior constitutional advisor in Iraq – cast him into the middle of the debate about the future of democracy in the Islamic world. At 32, he published his first book on the topic, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Over the years, interspersed with constitutional advising in Iraq and in Tunisia after the Arab Spring, Noah published three more books on the long trajectory of Islam and democracy: What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building; The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State; and The Arab Winter: A Tragedy, all published by Princeton University Press.

In a separate series of books, Noah has been telling the history of the U.S. Constitution through the stories of the people who created, shaped, and interpreted it. The series starts with The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President (Random House). The story continues chronologically with The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). It picks up again with Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices (Twelve Books). Still to come is a book on the era between Lincoln and FDR, focused on Fourteenth Amendment; and one on the 1960s to the present, focused on the rise and fall of individual rights.

In addition to these books, Noah also published an early book (2013) on U.S.-China competition titled Cool War: The Future of Global Competition (Random House); and he is the co-author, with Kathleen Sullivan, of the leading Constitutional Law casebook (Foundation Press).

His next book, Bad Jew: A Perplexed Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), will be published in March 2024.

He is represented by Andrew Wylie.

To Be A Jew Today - A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish People

What does it mean to be a Jew? At a time of world- wide crisis, venerable answers to this question have become unsettled. In To Be a Jew Today, the legal scholar and writer Noah Feldman draws on a lifelong engagement with his religion to offer a wide-ranging interpretation of Judaism in its current varieties. How do Jews today understand their relationship to God, to Israel, and to each other— and live their lives accordingly?

The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America

The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America (2021) “seeks to retell the story of the meaning of the Constitution in the Civil War and of Lincoln’s decisive action not as the story of successful salvation but as something more dramatic, and more extreme: the frank breaking and frank remaking of the entire union of order, rights, constitution, and liberty.” The book is a history of “an extraordinary transformation” in Lincoln's “beliefs about the meaning of the Constitution.”

Constitutional Law: 20th Edition

This casebook provides a unique combination of clearly structured and lawyerly coverage of the cases with rich historical, theoretical, and philosophical materials that illuminate the development of our constitutional law. The note materials and questions in the casebook make it easy to structure classes and promote lively discussion. And comparative examples from the constitutional law of other nations are provided throughout. The Twentieth Edition is an updated version of this classic casebook, adding new materials on the Supreme Court’s most recent decisions on the First Amendment, Equal Protection, Substantive Due Process, Separation of Powers, and Federalism.

First Amendment Law (University Casebook Series)

The Seventh Edition provides in-depth coverage of the freedoms of speech, press and association, as well as the free exercise and establishment clauses. The material covers in freestanding form all the chapters and materials relating to the First Amendment from Sullivan and Feldman’s Constitutional Law, Twentieth Edition. Highlights of the new edition include the state of the law on such contemporary First Amendment problems as free speech and social media and religious manifestations in public space. Students using this casebook will be well-equipped to litigate any area of First Amendment law.

The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President

The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President (2017) "explores Madison's reactive and improvisational thinking as it played out in the three uniquely consequential roles, or ‘lives,' he had — as constitutional architect and co-author with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay of the ‘Federalist Papers,' political partisan and wartime president.” Feldman writes that Madison's "character emerges most vividly through the cycles of [his] extraordinarily close friendships" and that his biography is "entwined with that of the constitutional republic itself, its personalities, and its permanent struggle to reconcile unity with profound disagreement."

The Arab Winter: A Tragedy

The Arab Winter: A Tragedy (2020) seeks to "save the Arab spring from the verdict of implicit nonexistence and to propose an alternative account that highlights the exercise of collective, free political action." The book "is an interdisciplinary work of history and sociology, as well as linguistics, using insights of political philosophy to explore the right ways of governing in the very different countries of Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia, as well as the Islamic State."

Cool War: The Future of Global Competition

Cool War: The Future of Global Competition (2013) is about the relationship between the United States and China, as "the world's two biggest economies are fated to remain geopolitical frenemies, locked in a chilly embrace necessitated by economic interdependence but made tense by constant military and political rivalry in Asia and, increasingly, the rest of the world." As each side vies for supremacy, Feldman warns, the Cool War has the potential to become a hot war.

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

Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices (2010) focuses on four of Roosevelt's Supreme Court appointees: Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, Robert Jackson, and William O. Douglas, and "how the backgrounds, personalities, and experiences of the four justices shaped their philosophies and how those philosophies changed the Court from a conservative one resisting America's liberal turn under FDR into the liberal one that helped remake the nation." This group biography demonstrates that their competing judicial philosophies "are the ones that continue to preoccupy lawyers, law professors and judges".

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (2008) explains the increasingly loud call for implementing shari'a in Muslim countries. Feldman argues that current systems of government in certain Muslim countries have unchecked executive power because the previous system – in which scholarly interpretation of shari'a served to counterbalance executive power – was undermined by failed reforms in the modern era.[45] Drawing on the success of this previous system, Feldman proposes a viable path for Islamic governance that depends on legislators to serve as the check on authoritarian executives.

Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It

Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It (2005) describes "key episodes in the history of church-state relations to show how the growing religious diversity of the American people has led to new efforts to find common ground for political and social life." Addressing the divide between the competing camps of "values evangelicals" and "legal secularists," Feldman proposes a compromise "to allow religious symbols in public places but not to allow public funding for specifically religious practices or activities".

What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building

What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building (2004) argues that "having broken the Iraqi government, Washington has an obligation to bring about a new and better one while ensuring that nation building does not become "a paternalistic, colonialist charade." As a constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Feldman suggests the United States ensure security and organize elections before withdrawing.

After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy

After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (2003) contends that support of violent jihad in the Muslim world is declining in favor of popularity for both Islam and democracy. Explaining shared traits of Islam and democracy, such as equality and flexibility, Feldman argues that the two are in fact compatible and that "democracy in the Arab world should be Islamic in character."

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