Noah Feldman

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: What does the U.S. Constitution really have to say about whether the Senate must put a president’s Supreme Court nominee to a vote? President Barack Obama says the Constitution “is pretty clear on what happens next”: He nominates, and the Senate says yes or no in a timely fashion. Republicans think the Constitution gives the Senate the right, not just the power, to give the president’s nominee a hearing or to refuse to do so. ... They’re both wrong. Here’s what the Constitution says about filling Supreme Court vacancies: nothing.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman:  Justice Antonin Scalia didn’t invent originalism. The credit for that on the modern Supreme Court goes to Justice Hugo Black, who developed the approach to constitutional interpretation as a liberal tool to make the states comply with the Bill of Rights. But Scalia did more to bring originalism into the conservative mainstream than any other Supreme Court justice. In fact, his role as the godfather of the conservative constitutional rebirth of the 1980s and ’90s derived from his originalist advocacy. But will Scalia’s originalist legacy last? Can the philosophy outlive the man? There is reason to doubt it -- because Scalia is literally irreplaceable, and because the younger conservative justices aren’t originalists of the same stripe.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: How will the death of Justice Antonin Scalia affect the major cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, all of which are expected to be decided by the end of June? The answer doesn’t depend entirely on how Scalia would’ve voted. It also depends on a necessary rule of procedure: When the Supreme Court is divided equally, it upholds the decision below.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: There is something obviously preposterous about Anat Berko’s suggestion on the floor of Israel’s Knesset that Palestine can’t exist because the Arabic language doesn’t have the “P” sound. But the use of amateur linguistics in politics isn’t restricted to arguments denying opponents’ legitimacy -- it can also be used for salutary purposes. Barack Obama, for example, visiting a U.S. mosque for the first time in his presidency, recently said that “the very word itself, Islam, comes from salam -- peace.”From a technical standpoint, both Berko and Obama are wrong.

Harvard Law School affiliates remembered alumnus and Supreme Court Justice Antonin G. Scalia, who died Saturday at age 79, for his vibrant, fiery personality and his substantial contributions to United States law. “Justice Scalia will be remembered as one of the most influential jurists in American history,” Law School Dean Martha L. Minow wrote in a statement. ...  Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who knew Scalia personally, often found himself squaring off against the justice. Dershowitz said. “I disagree with almost all of his opinions, but I found him to be a formidable intellectual adversary.”....Law professor Charles Fried, who has written extensively on Scalia’s judicial stances, wrote in an email, “I knew him in so many ways over so many years. I am very sad about this great man's death.”...Law professor Richard Lazarus penned an op-ed in the Harvard Law Record extolling Scalia’s contributions to the art of oral argument. In a Bloomberg View piece, columnist and Law professor Noah R. Feldman wrote, “Antonin Scalia will go down as one of the greatest justices in U.S. Supreme Court history -- and one of the worst.” Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe commented in Politico Magazine, “To say that Scalia will be missed is an understatement.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: The death of Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday creates a major challenge for President Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election. Obama has said he will nominate a replacement to the U.S. Supreme Court, even though Senate Republican leaders have made it clear they prefer the seat remain vacant for now. Should the president go along, and not nominate anyone, liberals will be enraged at his passivity. If Obama does nominate a justice quickly, should he pick a liberal whose rejection will galvanize Democratic voters to turn out for the party’s nominee in November, in hopes of a second chance? Or should he pick a moderate who has an outside chance of actually being confirmed, creating the possibility of a liberal balance on the court even if a Republican wins in November?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: Antonin Scalia will go down as one of the greatest justices in U.S. Supreme Court history -- and one of the worst. His greatness derived from his carefully articulated philosophy of constitutional interpretation, based on the law as a set of rules that should be applied in accordance with the original meaning of the document. Yet on issues from race to gay rights to the environment, his reactionary conservatism consistently put him on the wrong side of constitutional law’s gradual progressive evolutionary path. To put it bluntly, Scalia’s reasoning was almost always beautiful and elegant, but his results were almost always wrong. Scalia, who died Saturday at 79, could be acerbic at a personal level. His biting humor often had a sarcastic edge, and he alienated Justice Sandra Day O’Connor by dismissing the quality of her analytic reasoning. At the same time, one of my fondest memories is an afternoon spent drinking two bottles of red wine and eating pizza at A.V. Ristorante, a now-defunct Italian spot in Washington, with Scalia and my fellow clerks for Justice David Souter, liberals all. Scalia was relaxed, warm and witty -- charm itself, trading ideas and arguments and treating us with complete equality. I remember thinking that if this was the devil, he certainly assumed a most pleasing form.

Before he died Saturday at age 79, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the longest-serving member of the current court, a towering figure in the legal community who now leaves a historic legacy. That’s how he’s being remembered. But just what was that legacy, exactly? ... That’s the portrait that emerges here from the 19 top legal thinkersPolitico Magazine asked to reflect on his life and death. ...Laurence H. Tribe ...Noah Feldman,

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Department of Justice must’ve expected that the Ferguson, Missouri, City Council would stall in accepting the terms of a consent decree over allegations that the city’s police and courts have violated black residents’ civil rights. The department had a 56-page complaint for a lawsuit at the ready, and filed it just a day after the council demanded several changes to the negotiated draft. Presumably, Ferguson won’t want the embarrassment or the expense of fighting a federal lawsuit. The department is using force as a negotiating tactic, and Ferguson will have to fold. Yet the episode raises a problem with roots in the history of civil-rights enforcement. What should the Department of Justice or the courts do if a city like Ferguson won’t accept a deal, and insists on litigating alleged civil-rights violations to completion?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman:  There’s no mistaking the message of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to stay the Barack Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan regulation while it’s being challenged before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Before Tuesday, the court had never granted a regulatory stay in such circumstances, where the lower court hasn’t ruled and has itself declined to block the regulation while it’s considering the case. It’s understandable that environmental advocates are upset. What’s less obvious is why the Supreme Court hasn’t done this sort of thing before, and what’s wrong with them doing it now, if anything. Evaluating the competing values at stake should help us understand whether the court got it right -- and whether we should expect more such stays in the future.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: The civilians fleeing Aleppo don’t prove definitively that, with Russian backing, President Bashar al-Assad will win the Syrian civil war. But it’s certainly time to game out that scenario and ask: What would victory look like to Assad? And what will happen to the other regional actors engaged in this fight? The decisive element to consider is whether Assad needs to defeat Islamic State to be a winner. If the answer is yes -- and if Assad could do it -- the world would probably breathe a sigh of relief, and accept Assad’s victory, despite its extraordinary human costs and egregious violations of human rights.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has struck down Maryland’s law regulating assault weapons, creating a split with the 2nd Circuit, which upheld similar laws in New York and Connecticut. That split could, and probably should, lead the U.S. Supreme Court to take up and decide the issue. It’s time therefore to ask: How should the justices treat the question? In particular, what does the right to bear arms, created to preserve a “well-regulated militia,” say about assault weapons today?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Phoenix City Council has voted to no longer to begin its meetings with a public prayer. Sounds like a victory for the separation of church and state, right? Maybe even the influence of Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in the Town of Greece case, in which the court’s majority allowed such prayers to continue? Think again. The Phoenix City Council is banning prayer so that self-described Satanists won’t have a chance to give one. The decision isn’t about tolerance but intolerance. In the end, that’s a good thing, a sign of the establishment clause working -- and of James Madison’s First Amendment logic in action.

Bloomberg Law hosts June Grasso and Michael Best discuss a human rights lawsuit against Yusuf Abdi Ali, a former colonel in the Somali National Army, who is accused of presiding over the deaths of hundreds of people in northern Somalia in 1984. They speak with Noah Feldman, a law professor at the Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Can a payday lender’s contract require all borrowers’ disputes be subject to an arbitration process in which decisions are exempt from federal law? In a decision announced this week with potential consequences for millions of contracts signed every day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has said no. The decision shines a light on a particularly disreputable instance of the generally worrisome phenomenon of payday loans. Its importance, however, touches on broader issues, including the sovereignty of Indian tribes.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In an astonishing report, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has accused Sweden and the U.K. of arbitrarily detaining Wikileaks founder Julian Assange because of a sexual-assault investigation against him in Sweden. To be sure, it’s unknown whether he’s guilty of the charges. Likewise, it’s impossible to know whether Assange criminally conspired with U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley) to steal classified material, or whether Assange and Wikileaks simply published that material in a manner that should be protected by the First Amendment. But what seems highly likely is that Assange’s detention is anything but arbitrary -- it’s because of the investigation of serious crimes.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Tesla Motors has taken the first step toward challenging a year-old Michigan law that bars direct-to-consumer auto sales in the state. I trust you’ll agree with me that the law is a blatant piece of protectionism, designed to help car dealers at the expense of consumers. But that still leaves an important -- and interesting -- question: Is the law not merely dumb, but unconstitutional, too?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. There’s something mystifying about the animated pop video released this week by the Chinese Communist Party to illustrate President Xi Jinping’s “Four Comprehensives” policy a year after its announcement. If you’re expecting the loyalty dance of the Cultural Revolution, or the terrifying elegance of red flags being silently waved, you’re in for a surprise. The new video is cloyingly cute and almost self-consciously trivializing, without a shred of cultural pretension.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. International human-rights litigation in the U.S. is still alive, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s best efforts to kill it. The latest evidence is a decision this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to allow part of a lawsuit alleging human-rights violations in Somalia in the 1980s to go forward. The case is thoroughly fascinating, on both the facts and the law. It sheds light not only on the state of human-rights law in the U.S., but also on the U.S. government’s murky record of enabling violations by its military allies.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The European Union and the United States reached a new deal Tuesday on privacy protections for Europeans’ data that gets sent to U.S. servers. The agreement, to be called Privacy Shield, replaces an agreement repudiated by the European Court of Justice in October. That’s good news for major corporations like Facebook and Google that want continued access to their European users’ data. But the new agreement requires scrutiny itself, which European regulators and probably the ECJ are going to give it. Notwithstanding the powerful business interests at stake, there’s reason to think that the agreement may have loopholes that make it difficult for those bodies to uphold.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Can Wisconsin make a sex offender who’s completed his sentence wear a GPS monitor on his ankle for the rest of his life? Reversing a lower court judgment last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit said the answer is yes. The opinion, by the influential Judge Richard Posner, presents itself as an exercise in cost-benefit analysis and legal common sense. But the decision is wrong nonetheless, because the right to privacy can’t be balanced away by statistics.