Quotes by Noah Feldman

“With a few exceptions, these guys were not major, major players. Theyve tried to use brinkmanship and now their bluff has been called. By enforcing its deadlines, the administration has shown that they were willing to cut the Sunnis off.”

“Theres a bit of a message to the administration: Dont rush this. . . . We need to do this right, not fast, ”

“To the extent that families are moving out, neighborhood by neighborhood, that itself is a sign of civil war.”

“If you want to bring people on board you have to give them more than 48 hours.”

“I think its pretty clear our influence is waning as far as agenda setting.”

“If they cant protect the pipelines they cant protect the flow of cash and thats their lifeline,”

“[Then there are those among the Sunni leadership looking beyond the October 15 referendum at parliamentary elections—scheduled for December 15—as a greater opportunity to improve the political situation for Iraq’s Sunni Arabs.] The emergence of a credible elected Sunni leadership would be a major step forward for Iraqi politics, ... which have so far been hampered by the absence of anyone who can claim to speak for the ordinary Sunni and deliver those insurgent leaders who may be inclined to compromise.”

“A constitution that is a deal between the Shiites and Kurds is not a deal.”

“If they are acknowledging that the delay is costing them - that it is making things worse - that is a step in the right direction.”

In 1953, after the armistice ending the Korean War, South Korea lay in ruins. President Eisenhower was eager to put an end to hostilities that had left his predecessor deeply unpopular, and the war ended in an uneasy stalemate.

Cyber war takes place largely in secret, unknown to the general public on both sides.

Cyber attacks are not what makes the cool war cool. As a strategic matter, they do not differ fundamentally from older tools of espionage and sabotage.

From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

In politics, Joseph Smith was something of a radical. He preached, instead of democracy, a version of theocratic rule within a framework given by his own prophetic leadership. At Nauvoo, Smith affected a Napoleonic uniform and made himself into a general and quasi king of the polity he had constituted.

The Chinese public is deeply nationalist, which matters to Chinas unelected political leadership as much as U.S. nationalism does to American politicians. As China becomes the worlds largest economy, there is meaningful public pressure for its power status to advance in parallel. Any alternative would be humiliating.

Marriage is the most obvious public practice about which information is readily available. When combined with the traditional Jewish concern for continuity and self-preservation - itself only intensified by the memory of the Holocaust - marriage becomes the sine qua non of social membership in the modern Orthodox community.

To hear both critics and defenders talk about the fitness of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, youd think the most successful Supreme Court justices had been warm, collegial consensus-builders. But history tells a different story.

Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves. As the central preoccupations of an era make their way into the legal system, the Supreme Court eventually weighs in, and nine lawyers in robes become oracles of our national identity.