Charles Fried

An op-ed by Charles Fried. I was one of many Republicans who stated publicly and vehemently that we considered Donald Trump so unsuited to be president that our duty to the country required that, holding our noses, we support his Democrat opponent. We did not prevail. Donald Trump is our president for the next four years. The correct response to this fact is the one Barack Obama took after he met with the president-elect at the White House: We must hope that he succeeds. This reaction is the opposite of what the once good and patriotic politician Mitch McConnell told his party during the midterm elections in 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Of course, if Obama failed, so did the country.

Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, who has a long history of hard-line opposition to marijuana, could unravel the burgeoning recreational marijuana industry across the country, including in Massachusetts. Senator Jeff Sessions, a former federal prosecutor and Alabama attorney general, has been taking on marijuana dealers since the 1970s...The tension between federal law and the law in states where voters have legalized marijuana for recreational use created a practical problem for the Obama administration, said Charles Fried, a former solicitor general of the United States and longtime Harvard Law School professor. The Obama administration has chosen to solve it through nonenforcement, he said. But “somebody who is indicted, prosecuted, and convicted has no defense by saying, ‘It’s legal on the ground in Colorado!’ Now you may have a hard time getting a jury to convict, and it may be extremely unpopular, and it may be a bad idea,” he continued, “but as a legal matter, it’s clear cut.”

President-elect Donald Trump signaled he has no intention to investigate or prosecute his campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton, over her use of private e-mail as secretary of state or her family’s foundation after he’s inaugurated in January..."The power is there, no question," Harvard Law School professor Charles Fried said in an interview. "It’s in the president. The attorney general works for the president." Fried served as U.S. solicitor general, the government’s top courtroom lawyer, during President Ronald Reagan’s second term. "I rather think it’s a good idea that we don’t have the business of pursuing the previous, defeated administration," Fried said.

An op-ed by Charles Fried. We have a direct democracy: Senators, representatives and members of the Electoral College are all elected directly by the people. They do not, however, elect the president directly. This is a feature of the kind of government we have chosen from the beginning in which the states are important subsidiary (in some instances, primary) units of government.

...In one way or another, Harvard Law professors helped shape Obama’s legacy. But the relationship between the Law School and the next president has yet to be defined. A trove of emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, leaked by Wikileaks in October, show that a few Law professors have caught the campaign’s attention. And Clinton’s campaign has contacted at least one about serving in her administration if she wins next Tuesday. There is no indication that Trump’s campaign has contacted any Law professors. “I think law is about policy choices so by definition we are always involved in policy choices,” Law professor Christine A. Desan said, referring to her fellow faculty members...fewer Law School faculty members are actively and openly advising either candidate in this election—a noticeable shift from previous elections, said Law Professor and former U.S. Solicitor General Charles Fried.

A letter by Charles Fried. In “The Supreme Court Is Being Hypocritical” (Op-Ed, Oct. 11), Gabe Roth criticizes the justices for playing by their own rules instead of heeding their decisions in suits before them “that have parallels with how they act as stewards of their institution.” He writes that “surely Justice Kagan’s experience in the Obama administration constituted ‘significant involvement’ in the Affordable Care Act cases” and that the justice should have recused herself. Justice Elena Kagan’s “significant involvement” was as solicitor general, a position that is primarily concerned with managing the administration’s appellate litigation.

Donald Trump’s threat to sic a special prosecutor on Hillary Clinton should he win the presidency has prompted a group of Republican former Justice Department officials to call for the GOP presidential nominee’s defeat in November. “We believe that Donald Trump’s impulsive treatment, flair for controversy, vindictive approach to his opponents and alarming views outside the constitutional mainstream ill suit him to oversee the execution of the laws in a fair and evenhanded manner,” reads the letter, signed by about two dozen former officials who served under five Republican presidents from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. “None of us will vote for Mr. Trump and all believe he must be defeated at the polls.”...signers included...former Solicitor General Charles Fried (Reagan).

By Charles Fried: Lincoln understood the difference between departure from the letter of the law in an unprecedented emergency and violation of universal precepts of human dignity. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, John Yoo as well as those who indiscriminately condemned the post-9/11 responses of these men did not.

An op-ed by Charles Fried. It was urgent that Hillary Clinton in her Reno speech indict Donald Trump for his regular, unremitting embrace of the slogans, causes and emblems of the far right (not conservative, please!) hate-mongering fringe of our public discourse.This is not just an accidental association. It is his chosen signature. Remember, he was an enthusiastic birther and has gone on to embrace every sinister paranoid fantasy since.These are not ghosts you can raise just when it seems convenient or because a particular crowd might thrill to them and then when the time comes to govern you can waive aside and pretend you never summoned them. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. And these fleas carry the disease of virulent hatred and discord.

An op-ed by Charles Fried. Increasing numbers of registered Republicans, and former and present Republican officials like myself, will not support Donald Trump for president. That’s the easy part. He has shown us that he is a mean and vindictive bully, striking out in the crudest ways (e.g., his sexist ripostes against Carly Fiorina and Megan Kelly) against anyone who attacks him, and then extending his vile remarks even to their relatives (Heidi and Rafael Cruz, Ghazala Khan). Indeed it is hard to think of any person in recent public life who has displayed a more repellent personality. Richard Nixon might come to mind, but that only because of what showed up in the secret recordings of what he thought were private conversations in the Oval Office. In public, Nixon had the self-control and self-awareness to keep his worst qualities reasonably well hidden. Rochefoucauld said that hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, and in this respect at least, Trump is no hypocrite.

...Officials in previous GOP administrations...Charles Fried, former U.S. solicitor general under Reagan and current Harvard Law professor -- "Though long a registered Republican, this will be the third consecutive presidential election in which my party forces the choice between party and, in John McCain’s words, putting America first. ... It is to [Mitt[ Romney's credit that this year, like John Paulson and George Will, he is standing up against the brutal, substantively incoherent, and authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump.

The man who represented the Reagan administration 25 times at the Supreme Court has issued a stinging rebuke of Donald Trump in an exclusive to Slate. Charles Fried, who served as solicitor general from 1985-1989 and now teaches constitutional law at Harvard Law School, tells Slate that Trump is the most risky in a string of recent GOP candidates that have forced a choice between party and country. Here is the full comment: "Though long a registered Republican, this will be the third consecutive presidential election in which my party forces the choice between party and, in John McCain’s words, putting America first. Sarah Palin, McCain¹s erratic and surely regretted choice as running mate, in her voluble and opinionated ignorance was an early precursor of Donald Trump. It was the spirit of Sarah Palin and those who cheered her on that animated the subsequent defeat of such traditional Republicans as Bob Bennett in Utah, Dick Lugar in Indiana, and Eric Cantor in Virginia. Many who survived only did so by pretending to positions they did not hold. There was no more transparent pretender than Mitt Romney in 2012. Now those same forces have given us Donald Trump, whose presumptive presence at the head of the Republican ticket disgraces not only the party but the nation. You sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. It is to Romney's credit that this year, like John Paulson and George Will, he is standing up against the brutal, substantively incoherent, and authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump."

Four major Supreme Court decisions were released Thursday that amount to a win for supporters of affirmative action, a setback for President Obama's immigration plan and significant implications for mandatory minimum sentencing. Guests: Nancy Gertner, former Massachusetts federal judge, senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and WBUR legal analyst. Charles Fried, professor of law at Harvard Law School and former U.S. solicitor general.

IndonesiaX, a massive open online course platform, has launched an online course in which materials are developed by HarvardX. The course, titled “Contract law: From trust to promise to contract”, is delivered in video format by Professor Charles Fried of Harvard Law School. Professor Fried is one of the world’s renowned experts in the field of contractual law and has been teaching in the Harvard Law School for nearly 50 years, and has also written a lot of studies about contracts. Professor Fried uses a storytelling approach to deliver his material, which gives his students a unique and interesting experience. The course videos are presented in English, however to ensure that every IndonesiaX course participants gets the same opportunity to learn, the platform provides an Indonesian translation.

Was a Harvard Law School student’s remark to a “smelly” visiting Israeli dignitary anti-Semitic—or simply bizarre?  ...“I think what he said was clearly offensive, and he has no right to make a statement in public and have his name remain confidential,” Charles Fried, Beneficial Professor of Law at HLS, told The Daily Beast. “But I’m glad he’s not being disciplined because that would make us look like Erdogan,” he added, referring to the former Prime Minister of Turkey, where speech is not protected under law. 

Years before the government shutdown he helped engineer, and way before he became the most unpopular man in the Senate, Ted Cruz stood among friends during a visit to Harvard Law School. ... Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor and faculty adviser to the Federalist Society who had served as President Reagan’s solicitor general, said the society “made students who didn’t have some standard set of [liberal] beliefs feel less beleaguered.” “If you put down on your CV that you were a member or an officer of the Federalist Society, that’s a signal where your political heart beats,” Fried said.

...Graduates of Harvard Law School and Yale Law School have dominated the court for the past two decades, and each sitting justice attended one of those schools...Harvard Law professor Charles Fried said that the preoccupation with where the justices attended law school is unhelpful, particularly because Harvard students come from a wide range of ethnicities, educational backgrounds and income levels—each of which are more important factors than the name on a judge’s law degree. “What’s more important [than their law alma matter] is their ability, their knowledge, how much they’ve learned and how good they are,” Fried said...“I certainly won’t say that having a lot of Harvard justices is a bad thing,” said Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, who attributes the school’s long roster of high court judges to its large size, elite reputation, and commitment to admitting students with from a broad array of backgrounds and states who display leadership qualities.