The American Bar Association has selected HLS Professor Noah Feldman’s “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices” (Twelve, 2010) to receive its 2011 Silver Gavel Award for Books. The group biography of Felix Frankfurter LL.B. 1906, Robert Jackson, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas explores the justices’ contentious relationship and their effect on 20th century constitutional law.
Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow said, “It is just terrific to see this recognition by the ABA for Noah’s work on a book that is superbly researched, beautifully written, and brilliantly conceived.”
Feldman is one of six recipients this year of the ABA award. It recognizes works in media and the arts published or presented during the preceding year that are exemplary in fostering the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system. The five other winners were selected for works produced in television, magazines, newspapers, documentary film, and radio. The awards will be presented in July at a ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Other books by Feldman include “The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State” (Princeton University Press, 2008), “Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem—And What We Should Do About It” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), “What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building” (Princeton University Press, 2004), and “After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003). He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times.