Constitutional law scholar to join HLS

Constitutional law scholar and well-known author Noah Feldman, currently a tenured professor of law at New York University, has accepted an offer to join the Harvard Law faculty beginning next fall. Feldman is a leading expert in many aspects of constitutional law, particularly law and religion, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory.

‘Noah Feldman is one of the stars of his generation, said Dean Elena Kagan ’86. ‘He is a brilliant thinker and writer, who has produced a remarkable body of work while still early in his career. From his on-the-ground knowledge of lawmaking in Iraq to his historical research on religious freedom in the United States, his range is as wide as any in the legal academy. He will add depth to our already great constitutional law faculty, and enhance the richness and dynamism of the Harvard Law community in innumerable ways.

In addition to his teaching and research, Feldman is a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and other news outlets on topics ranging from the separation of church and state to American foreign policy. In 2003, he served as a constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Feldman is the author of three books: ‘After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (2003), ‘What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building (2004), and ‘Divided By God: America’s Church-State Problem – and What We Should Do About It (2005). He is also the author of many scholarly articles published in journals such as the Harvard Law Review, the New York University Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal.

In 1992, Feldman earned an A.B. summa cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard College. He was selected to be a Rhodes Scholar and earned a D.Phil. in Islamic thought from Oxford University in 1994. He attended Yale Law School, where he earned his J.D. in 1997 and served as book reviews editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Feldman went on to clerk for Chief Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Associate Justice David Souter ’66 of the U.S. Supreme Court.

He began teaching at New York University in 2001, following an appointment as a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. He was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School during the 2004-05 academic year. He was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2005-06, and is currently an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.