Noah Feldman

Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on why he thinks President Donald Trump’s actions are impeachable.

Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, is part of a vanishing breed, a public intellectual equally at ease with writing law review articles, books aimed at both popular and scholarly audiences and regular opinion columns, all leaning left but with a distinct contrarian streak. In October, he declared that the country was in a constitutional crisis, caused by the events that followed the disclosure of a July 25 phone call between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine...With years of teaching constitutional law at some of the country’s most elite institutions, Mr. Feldman will bring a deep analysis of different aspects of the Constitution and a lot of historical context. A prolific writer, he has written eight books and been published broadly, including in The New York Times Magazine and Bloomberg News. And he has been outspoken about his views that the country is in a crisis without a simple solution to resolve it.

You hear it constantly: President Trump is a “Russian dupe.” Republicans spreading lies about Ukrainian interference in 2016 are Vladimir Putin’s “useful idiots.” By getting Trump to adopt those lies rather than admit to Russian interference, the Russian leader has skillfully played on Trump’s “ego.” As the impeachment inquiry heads into its next phase, such phrases will be everywhere. In a New York Times editorial that excoriates Trump and Republicans over the Ukraine lie, we get this: “In Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin found the perfect dupe to promote even the most crackpot of theories.” It’s time for a reconsideration of this concept...We now know that the lie about Ukrainian interference has been a mainstay of self-absolving Russian propaganda for years. But Trump hasn’t been duped into spreading it. He explicitly recognizes an alliance of his own interests with those of Russia in doing so (and in procuring whatever other outside help he can) in corrupting U.S. liberal democracy for his own malevolent self-interested purposes. This has implications for impeachment. As Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman will argue to the Judiciary Committee, impeachment binds the president to the rule of law, as a remedy against abuses of power to advance nakedly corrupt self interest.

House Democrats take on the task of deciding whether President Trump’s campaign for Ukraine to launch investigations aimed at American political players constitutes grounds for impeachment, an effort that will put the focus on a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution and test the unity of the Democratic caucus. The Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee hears Wednesday from four law professors—three called by Democrats and one by Republicans—to help frame the debate...Noah Feldman, a Harvard University law professor who also testifies Wednesday, came to a similar conclusion. “President Trump’s conduct described in the testimony and evidence clearly constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under the Constitution,” he said in prepared testimony. “President Trump abused his office by soliciting the president of Ukraine to investigate his political rivals in order to gain personal political advantage, including in the 2020 presidential election.”

Noah Feldman literally wrote the book on constitutional law. The Harvard Law School professor, who will be one of four academics testifying Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee as it probes the legal grounds for impeaching President Trump, coauthored the textbook “Constitutional Law.” But that is only the tip of the iceberg of the prolific writing of the prominent public intellectual. He coauthored another textbook, on the First Amendment, as well as seven other nonfiction books that covered topics ranging from President James Madison to America’s “church-state problem” to the rise and fall of the Islamic State. The Boston native is also a Bloomberg News opinion columnist and hosts a podcast called “Deep Background.” He has contributed to the New York Times magazine and New York Review of Books. And he does not shy away from various media appearances. Feldman “specializes in constitutional studies, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, free speech, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory,” according to the Harvard Law website.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee announced on Monday it will call four witnesses, all of them law professors, during the first day of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Hearings in the Democrat-controlled House start Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. Trump, a Republican, and his lawyers were invited earlier to appear, but declined on Sunday, citing a lack of “fundamental fairness.” Here is who will testify: Noah Feldman, a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Feldman, a former clerk for Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court, was senior constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Feldman, in opinion columns for Bloomberg News, has written that Democrats have legitimate grounds to move ahead with impeachment because Trump has abused his power in office.

An article by Noah Feldman: The confusing saga of Donald Trump’s intervention in the case of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher seems to be over at last. Gallagher’s demotion has been reversed — a demotion that resulted from his posing with the corpse of a captured Islamic State fighter in Iraq — and he will get to keep his trident, the pin that signifies SEAL membership and that Navy officials wanted to take away. The main political casualty is the secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, who was fired by the secretary of defense after (it would seem) trying to get Trump to stay out of the issue on behalf of the admirals. The whole fight between Trump and his admirals looked remarkably opaque from the outside. That’s because underneath, important and conflicting principles were at stake.

An article by Noah Feldman: As a loyal American, I naturally want to side with the Duchess of Sussex (née Meghan Markle) in her growing feud with the British tabloid press. Yet the lawsuit that the Duchess and her husband, Prince Harry, have brought against the Mail on Sunday raises serious questions about the freedom of press. Difficult as it is to find anything sympathetic to say about tabloids, they do consistently test the boundaries of free speech — and in this insistence, there really is reason to think that it would be bad for the free flow of information if the royals were to win their lawsuit. To those accustomed to reading about libel lawsuits focused on salacious facts, the content of the material under dispute in the Sussex lawsuit seems remarkably tame. The central legal claim has to do with a letter the weekend edition of the Daily Mail published from Meghan to her estranged father, presumably provided to the newspaper by the father himself.

An article by Noah Feldman: A liberal group has criticized Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh for meeting last month with an anti-gay-rights activist whose organization had filed a “friend of the court” brief in a major gay-rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The group’s director has even called for the justices to recuse themselves. Brian Brown, the activist who met with the justices and runs the National Organization for Marriage, would appear to hold some seriously wrong beliefs. But the objection to justices meeting with people who have filed such briefs is misconceived. Friends of the court aren’t parties to a litigation in the ordinary sense. They’re independent groups or individuals sharing their views with the justices. There’s no scandal if justices interact with them. More fundamentally, the justices shouldn’t be shuttered away from the world like cloistered monks and nuns. It’s valuable for them to meet and talk with all kinds of people, including ideological advocates.

An article by Noah Feldman: The U.S. Supreme Court last week allowed a lawsuit against Remington Arms Co. by families of victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting to go forward, despite a federal law that on its face seemed to block the suit. That raises a challenging question for the manufacturer of the XM15-E2S weapon that gunman Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, back in 2012. Should Remington now fight the case in state court, arguing to a judge and jury that it shouldn’t be held liable under state and federal law? Or should it settle the case and hope that other states don’t follow Connecticut in interpreting federal law to allow for such lawsuits?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: U.S.-born Hoda Muthana should be in an American prison for joining Islamic State, the caliphate that terrorized, murdered and raped innocent civilians. Instead, she and her 2-year-old son are stuck in a refugee camp in Syria — because the U.S. government, relying on a technicality, has stripped her of her passport and told her that she and her son are not citizens. A federal judge has just held that government had the authority to do so. It’s hard to feel sympathy for Muthana. But the judge’s decisions, and the government’s before that, set a terrible precedent for others whom the government might try to strip of their citizenship in the future. A person who reasonably believes she was born a citizen, and has been issued a passport on that understanding by the government, should be treated as a citizen unless she has lied to get that passport in the first place.

An article by Noah Feldman: It is plainly immoral to deport Dreamers, people raised in the U.S. as undocumented aliens. President Donald Trump seems to understand that — which is why, when he officially rescinded President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, he said he had no choice because the program was illegal. Now the Supreme Court is being asked to rule on whether Trump’s rescission was itself illegal. That puts the court into a bind. Logically, the court should uphold Trump’s power to shut down the program. If Obama as president had the power to create DACA, Trump should have the power to end it. Morally, however, the court shouldn’t take away Dreamers’ right to remain in the U.S. Direct conflict between law and morality is the stuff of great works of literature, not to mention a host of “Law and Order” episodes. But it is much rarer in real life than you might think.

An article by Noah Feldman:  It’s no surprise that Ambassador William Taylor is expected to be the first witness to testify when the House of Representatives opens public impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump next week. First, he’s an astoundingly credible witness — straight from central casting, as Trump himself likes to say about some of his appointees. As a matter of prosecutorial strategy, that makes him an ideal first witness for House Democrats to lay out their case for the first time to the public. Second, the content of Taylor’s deposition was extraordinarily damning. That’s because it nailed Trump’s abuse of power, the fundamental element of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” for which Democrats aim to impeach.

An article by Noah Feldman: Fighting to keep his tax returns secret, President Donald Trump will soon ask the U.S. Supreme Court to grant him “temporary absolute immunity” from any criminal investigation while he’s in office. The case sets up yet another test for the court’s new swing voter, Chief Justice John Roberts, who is devoted to the principle of judicial restraint. The federal appeals court that has already rejected Trump’s claim understood this perfectly. It issued an extremely cautious, narrow opinion targeted straight at Roberts. That opinion, a minor masterpiece of judicial craft, strongly increases the odds that Roberts will reject absolute presidential immunity. In light of that opinion, I cautiously predict that, if the Supreme Court takes the case, it will hold that Trump’s accountant can be subpoenaed by a New York state grand jury to turn over the president’s tax records.

An article by Noah Feldman:  A growing number of cities and states want to turn climate change lawsuits against oil companies into the next tobacco or opioid litigation. In principle, that seems like a truly terrible idea. Such lawsuits will likely do even less to remedy the effects of climate change than similar suits did for lung cancer or opioid addiction. Yet on closer analysis, the climate change lawsuits may be the worst solution to mitigating climate change — except for all the others. The analogy to Winston Churchill’s notorious defense of democracy isn’t an accident. In the American form of democracy, oil companies enjoy an almost unparalleled capacity to influence Congress and federal government regulators.

An article by Noah Feldman: A growing number of cities and states want to turn climate change lawsuits against oil companies into the next tobacco or opioid litigation. In principle, that seems like a truly terrible idea. Such lawsuits will likely do even less to remedy the effects of climate change than similar suits did for lung cancer or opioid addiction. Yet on closer analysis, the climate change lawsuits may be the worst solution to mitigating climate change — except for all the others. The analogy to Winston Churchill’s notorious defense of democracy isn’t an accident. In the American form of democracy, oil companies enjoy an almost unparalleled capacity to influence Congress and federal government regulators. Local governments aren’t quite so captured. Recently, New York state’s lawsuit against Exxon began its trial; Massachusetts filed its own suit; and the Supreme Court declined an admittedly unusual request to stay suits being brought in state courts in Maryland, Rhode Island and Colorado.

An article by Noah Feldman: According to the White House, senior advisers who work closely with the president have “absolute immunity” from congressional subpoena on matters related to their official duties. That’s what the Trump administration is telling former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman — and almost certainly telling former national security adviser John Bolton. Kupperman, caught between a House subpoena and a presidential directive not to testify, went to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., on Friday to ask what he should do. To answer him, the court will likely have to rule on whether the claim of absolute immunity holds water or not.

An article by Noah Feldman: In an important development, a federal district court in Washington, D.C. has pointed the way to a possible resolution of the standoff between President Donald Trump and the House of Representatives over the legitimacy of the impeachment inquiry. The court’s ruling signals that at least part of the judiciary is prepared to help resolve the emerging constitutional crisis — by deciding in favor of Congress and against the president.

This week has seen some of the most damning testimony yet in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Meanwhile, some House Republicans took it upon themselves to storm into a secure briefing room to complain about the levels of transparency in the process. Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman joins Walter to explain why the impeachment fight tests the very limits of the U.S. constitution.

A constitutional scholar tells CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that American democracy is in real danger of failing if the House of Representatives fails to impeach President Donald Trump. In a clip aired on CNN Friday morning, Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman tells Zakaria that the mechanics of the Constitution make it clear that impeachment is the sole way an American president can be held accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors. In particular, Feldman says that he believes it is wildly implausible to argue that Trump was not seeking a thing of personal value from Ukraine when he asked its government to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden. “It’s extremely clear that it is a quid pro quo,” he said. “It’s laughable to think that the president was not trying to gain personally by investigating Joe Biden.”