Charles Fried

Charles Anthony Fried (born Karl Fried; April 15, 1935 – January 23, 2024) was an American jurist and lawyer.

Fried was born on April 15, 1935, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Marta and Anthony Fried.

They were a Jewish family.

His father was a Czech industrialist who served as a vice-president of the arms and automotive conglomerate Škoda Works.

Fried described him as a "Czech patriot" and the family as having "always looked to the United States and to American democracy for inspiration".

Before the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Frieds fled Czechoslovakia in 1939.

They lived briefly in England before moving in 1941 to New York, where Fried earned American citizenship in 1948 at the age of thirteen.

The family settled in New York City.

After graduating from the Lawrenceville School in 1952, Fried attended Princeton University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and received an A.B. in modern languages and literature in 1956 after completing a senior thesis titled "The Phedre of Racine: An Analysis of the Play's Artistry."

Fried then attended the University of Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degree in jurisprudence in 1958 and 1960, respectively, and was awarded the Ordronnaux Prize in Law (1958).

From 1960 to 1961, he served as law clerk to United States Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan II.

In 1961, Fried received his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Columbia Law School, where he was an editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Stone Scholar.

In 1961, he began teaching at Harvard Law School.

Fried argued 25 cases in front of the Supreme Court during his tenure as Solicitor General.

He served as counsel to numerous major law firms and clients, arguing several major cases, one of the most notable being Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, both in the Supreme Court and in the Ninth Circuit on remand.

He served on the Harvard Law School faculty from 1961 until his retirement in December 2023, teaching courses on appellate advocacy, commercial law, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, federal courts, labor law, torts, legal philosophy, and medical ethics.

Fried published extensively.

He was the author of more than ten books and over 30 journal articles.

His work also appeared in over a dozen collections.

Unusually for a law professor without a graduate degree in philosophy, he published significant work in moral and political theory only indirectly related to the law; Right and Wrong, for instance is a general statement of a Kantian position in ethics with affinities with the work of Thomas Nagel, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick.

He was conferred a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971–72.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences's Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Law Institute.

He also held advisory roles with the Department of Transportation from 1981 to 1983 and President Ronald Reagan (1982).

Fried was Orgain Lecturer at the University of Texas (1982), Tanner Lecturer on Human Values at Stanford University (1981), and Harris Lecturer on Medical Ethics at the Harvard Medical School (1974–75).

Prior to his appointment as Solicitor General, Fried was Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States from 1984 to 1985, which was preceded by a consulting relationship to that office.

He served as United States Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989.

He was a professor at Harvard Law School and a visiting professor at Columbia Law School.

He also served on the board of the nonpartisan group, the Campaign Legal Center.

Fried was the author of more than ten books and over 30 journal articles, and his work appeared in over a dozen collections.

In October 1985, Reagan appointed Fried as Solicitor General of the United States.

Fried had previously served as Deputy Solicitor General and Acting Solicitor General.

As Solicitor General, he represented the Reagan Administration before the Supreme Court in 25 cases.

In 1989, when Reagan left office, Fried returned to Harvard Law School.

Fried was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1995 by his former student, Governor Bill Weld, and served in that role until June 1999,.

During this time, he also taught constitutional law at Harvard Law School as a Distinguished Lecturer.

Prior to joining the court, Fried held the chair of Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School.

He returned to Harvard Law School in July 1999 as a full-time member of the faculty and Beneficial Professor of Law.

In September 2005, Fried testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the nomination of John Roberts to become Chief Justice of the United States.

After the nomination of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, Fried praised Alito as an outstanding judge but dismissed claims that Alito is radical, saying, "He is conservative, yes, but he is not radically conservative like Scalia."

On September 27, 2010, he and Gregory Fried discussed their book Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy, and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.