Charles Fried

The following op-ed was published in the Boston Globe on January 5, 2007: Deval Patrick is off to a bad start. If the amendment to prohibit gay marriage ever reaches the people, I shall vote against it. I regret that the Supreme Judicial Court, in its closely divided 2003 decision in the Goodridge case, proclaimed that the state Constitution requires same-sex marriage.

The following op-ed was published in The Boston Globe on December 13, 2006: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the egregious president of Iran, is hosting a conference this week on whether the Holocaust really happened.

In “Judging under Uncertainty: An Institutional Theory of Legal Interpretation” (Harvard University Press, 2006), Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 takes up the question: How should judges interpret statutes and the Constitution?

Compared with that of a lawyer in private practice, a judge's schedule may be more flexible. But not when compared with the life of an academic, says Professor Charles Fried.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s opponents have seized upon two memorandums he wrote when he was a junior lawyer in the office of the solicitor general....

Professor Charles Fried writes: I am convinced of the urgent necessity of such a surveillance program. I suppose but do not know -- the revelations have been understandably and deliberately vague -- that included in what is done is a constant computerized scan of all international electronic communications.

Professor Charles Fried writes: What is indispensable is that [Miers] be able to think lucidly and deeply about legal questions and express her thoughts in clear, pointed, understandable prose. A justice without those capabilities -- however generally intelligent, decent, and hardworking -- risks being a calamity for the court, the law, and the country.

Today, Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify in support of chief justice nominee John Roberts, a member of the class of '79, regarding Roberts' qualifications for the position. In his service as the chair of the practitioners’ reading committee, Fried examined Roberts' previous decisions to evaluate Roberts for the Standing Committee on the Judiciary of the American Bar Association.

“Excessive pay isn’t the only cost of flawed compensation arrangements. Executives’ influence over their boards has produced pay arrangements that dilute and sometimes pervert incentives.

The following op-ed by Professor Charles Fried appeared in The Boston Globe on Thursday, May 19, 2005: The Republican leadership may change Senate procedures so that a minority of 41 of the 100 senators could no longer permanently block a floor vote for judicial nominees. This is really a political, not a constitutional fight, and in figuring which side to support, the public should at least not be confused by bogus claims of constitutional principle.

Children, according to Professor Charles Fried, are natural lawyers.

Professor Alan Dershowitz reveals how notable trials throughout history have helped shape the nation in "America on Trial: The Cases That Define Our History" (Warner Books, May 2004).

Three days after the U.S. Supreme Court kicked off its 2003-2004 term, HLS faculty members evaluated the Court's recent decisions and forecast its upcoming cases.

Affirmative action remains contested terrain even among its proponents, as was evident in a debate between two Harvard Law School faculty members in the fall.

Professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. solicitor general and justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court discusses judicial confirmation battles and his recent cases before the Supreme Court. Fried’s book, “Saying What the Law Is: The Constitution in the Supreme Court,” will be published in February.

No one puffed on a Gauloises or sipped red wine, but people in the room had things to say about Kant.