Noah Feldman Quotes
The world is littered with constitutions that have written guarantees of rights but that don't actually deliver rights. What differentiates the ones where rights are real from where rights are fake is that it's in the initial interests of the majority to actually deliver these rights.
Feldman, Noah. Interview by Krista Tippett. On Being, The On Being Project, 20 July 2006.
There are some who believe that in a time of national emergency the government has the right to suspend the bill of rights or any other constitutional provision. This view is typically held by most foreign governments and they do this all the time. However in America, there is a general consensus that emergency does not vitiate the constitution. However even President Abraham Lincoln tried to suspend aspects of the Bill of Rights during a national crisis.
Noah R. Feldman is an American academic, author, columnist, public intellectual, and host of the podcast Deep Background. He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chairman of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His work is devoted to constitutional law, with an emphasis on free speech, law & religion, and the history of constitutional ideas.
