Charles Fried

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried sees contracts in every aspect of daily life. “When you get into a taxi, that’s a contract,” he said. “You don’t have to sign a piece of paper; you don’t need to. The assumption is that the driver will take you where you want to go, and that you’ll pay him when you arrive. The same is true of going to a restaurant. It’s not written down, but it’s understood that you’ll pay at the end of the transaction.” That understanding, Fried said, is critical to contracts in particular, and human interactions in general.

An op-ed by Charles Fried. The 1970s saw a changed Supreme Court. The Warren Court had dismantled legal segregation, announced a right to counsel in all criminal cases, given us the Miranda warnings and the Mapp rule on searches and seizures, forever changed the political map with the "one man, one vote" decision, almost done away with defamation in political cases, invented a right to sexual privacy, and much more. But then it became the Burger Court. Republican presidents, making good on campaign rhetoric, had replaced Black with Powell, Fortas with Blackmun, Douglas with Stevens, Harlan with Rehnquist. Though it may not have changed direction, the Court certainly changed speed...All-in-all, we have a pretty decent system, but there are purists left and right who would dismantle it. Because it is imperfect and jury-rigged, it is vulnerable to their jibes.

A letter by Charles Fried. Instead of dignifying with inflated philosophical bloviation the grim nastiness of the anonymous vandal(s) who pasted strips of black tape on the portraits of African-American professors, Harvard Law students responded with wit and human warmth: They put along the frames of those same portraits hundreds of colored Post-it notes bearing messages of affection and gratitude. These young men and women teach us all a valuable lesson.

Today, the Campaign Legal Center filed an amici brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission on behalf of former Justice Department attorneys in support of the Commission and its redistricting plan. The brief emphasizes that the state commission was fully justified in drawing districts, with minor population deviations, that complied with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act...Former U.S. Solicitor General Charles Fried, a CLC Board member, and Mark Posner, a former DOJ official, co-authored the brief.

He is a luminary in the world of cyberlaw, a star Harvard professor with a résumé a hundred pages thick, and a sensation on the thought leader circuit. But even though he has raised more than $1 million for his presidential bid, Lawrence Lessig, who is mounting a quixotic campaign for the Democratic nomination, is struggling to get noticed...“Larry’s a terrific guy, but I don’t think that because you have a very important project, that therefore you should be in charge of all the millions of things the president is in charge of, including foreign policy,” said Charles Fried, a conservative Harvard Law School professor who gave Mr. Lessig $100 anyway. Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law professor who was best man at Mr. Lessig’s wedding, was surprised last summer when they sat on a boat in New Hampshire and his old friend revealed his plans to run for president. While highly intelligent, he said, Mr. Lessig does not have the chatty demeanor of a regular politician, and Mr. Whiting said he worried about the toll the campaign could take. “I think it’s been frustrating for him,” Mr. Whiting said. “He’s brilliant and offers new ways of thinking about familiar problems, but ideas don’t always carry the day.”

“Choosing Not to Choose: Understanding the Value of Choice,” by Professor Cass R. Sunstein ’78 (Oxford). Choice, while a symbol of freedom, can also be a burden: If we had to choose all the time, asserts the author, we’d be overwhelmed. Indeed, Sunstein argues that in many instances, not choosing could benefit us—for example, if mortgages could be automatically refinanced when interest rates drop significantly.

...Held on July 21st, Media Day at HarvardX brought together local reporters, internal media, colleagues from edX and MITx, and others interested in, well, what was new...The assembled cast of presenters, in addition to the edX CEO, included Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School...Fried, who wrapped v1 of his ContractsX course about six months ago, said he was “utterly mystified” by their high-level of engagement. His HarvardX course, featuring animated case studies on contact law, was designed for “anyone interested in one of the most fundamental human relationships, the contract, and definitely not for lawyers and especially not for law students.” Fried has taught at Harvard since the 1960s and has never experienced anything quite like teaching through edX, calling the entire process “utterly marvelous.” He hinted that he almost doesn’t want to know why 20,000 students signed up and about 20% of them completed his course (“one of the highest completion rates I have been told of any MOOC”). I suspect those of who know Fried from his MOOC and for those in the room listening to him revel in a few example cases, would agree that his dynamic presence and passion might be the draw that not only gets learners inside the tent but keeps them enraptured.

Sen. Ted Cruz spent his years at Harvard Law School working to secure a Supreme Court clerkship and then made his name as a lawyer by arguing in front of the body nine times. But now, as a presidential candidate seeking support from the right wing of his party, Cruz (R-Tex.) has made excoriating the high court a central part of his campaign...Charles Fried, a Harvard Law professor who was solicitor general under Ronald Reagan and wrote one of Cruz’s recommendations for his Supreme Court clerkship, said Cruz’s call for a constitutional amendment and his harsh criticism of the court pale in comparison to dissents by Justice Antonin Scalia, who called the marriage decision “a threat to American democracy.” “Just compare what he says to what Scalia says in his dissents and tell me which you think is more vituperative,” Fried said of Cruz. “This isn’t vituperative. It is an opinion. It is a judgment, a legal judgment. It isn’t correct — I mean I don’t agree with it — but it’s not out of line.” Fried said he is more wary of Cruz’s assertions that only the parties to a judicial case must follow its rulings. “The suggestion that town clerks and justices of the peace and so on don’t have to follow this law — that’s a more dangerous proposition,” Fried said.

It was a historic term, a surprisingly liberal term — and a nasty term...The outcomes this term were so much of a turnaround that the liberal justices looked positively serene, even perky, in June, while the tone of the conservative dissents was unusually harsh..."[Scalia] wrote the nastiest thing I have read in any Supreme Court opinion," says Charles Fried, who served as the government's chief advocate in the Supreme Court during the Reagan administration...Fried, now a professor at Harvard Law School, says that in some ways, Kennedy's opinion provoked that reaction. He says that Kennedy should have focused on legal precedents instead of poetic passages. In particular, the court's 1967 decision striking down state bans on interracial marriage, and two more recent decisions dealing with same-sex relations and marriage. Those three court precedents dictated the result, Fried maintains, adding, "That is the law. Suck it up!"

Marriage rights for same-sex couples took less than a generation to race from a concept that triggered emotional battles on Beacon Hill to the law of the land...“In a dozen years it’s become constitutionally required throughout the country. That’s remarkable,” said Charles Fried, a Harvard Law professor who was solicitor general under President Reagan and served on the state Supreme Judicial Court in the 1990s. Fried said acceptance of gay people has “waxed and waned over the millennia” but called their inclusion in marriage brand new. “The Supreme Court dissenters are right when they say this is an utter novelty. So it’s an amazing thing that it has happened so quickly after such a long and universal history of not happening,” he said.

President Obama seemed to relish the chance to take yet another swipe at the Supreme Court justices who were deliberating a case that could determine the fate of his landmark health-care law...In reality, though, it is unlikely that any of Obama’s statements on the court or its decisions — the longest of which clocked in at just over three minutes — had much impact on the court’s decision in the most recent Obamacare case. “I don’t think it does anything,” said Charles Fried, a Harvard Law School professor who served as Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general. So why does Obama sound off? “Probably because he thinks it,” Fried said. “It’s hard not to think about these things. Whether it is a good idea to be so explicit is another question entirely.”

A letter by Charles Fried. Since Buckley in 1976 through Citizens United in 2010, the Supreme Court has struck a balance between the protection of the free-speech rights of persons and even corporations, and assuring elections that aren’t corrupted by vast amounts of dark money from a few people. The court has struck that balance by drawing a sharp line: Contributions to parties and candidates may be limited and controlled, but individuals and corporations may speak freely so long as they do so openly and independently of the parties and their candidates.

As President Obama took the stage at a hotel ballroom on Tuesday to deliver his latest defense of the Affordable Care Act, you had to wonder who exactly he was trying to reach. Was it the members of the Catholic Health Association—the supportive audience in front of him? Republicans in Congress? The divided public at large? Or perhaps, was it just the two particular Catholics—Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy—who at this moment hold the fate of Obama’s healthcare law in their hands?...Yet there’s less evidence that even the most persuasive use of the bully pulpit can sway the justices. “Would it help or hurt? I can’t imagine it’ll make any difference, and I can’t imagine he thinks it’ll make any difference,” said Charles Fried, the Harvard law professor who argued cases before the court as Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general. (Fried has weighed in on the Obama administration’s side in King v. Burwell.)

Panelists raised concerns about the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. at Harvard Law School’s annual conference on law, religion, and health on Thursday. ... Law School professor Charles Fried provided context for the issue Dionne raised, pointing to a different interpretation of the protection of religious freedom under the First Amendment, which he said was not always used to challenge laws. “It was assumed that the First Amendment had to do with beliefs and persecution of people for their beliefs,” Fried said. “[It] had nothing to do with granting exemption from what have come to be called laws of general applicability.” Law School Dean Martha L. Minow recognized the difficulty of this topic and empathized with the personal nature of religion in many people’s lives. In cases where individuals cannot find a way to reconcile this issue, Minow proposed an extreme solution. “There will be some issues where the values of this country will run in conflict with some people’s religious views, and if they can’t live with it they should leave,” she said. Minow herself could imagine choosing to leave the country over renouncing her religion, she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has almost certainly made its decision about the right to marry for same-sex couples. The justices met in private conference Friday, May 1, and took a vote. They have until June 30 to issue their decision. ... Roberts' seeming willingness to recognize sex discrimination in the context of bans on same-sex marriage stood in stark contrast to his equally blunt comment to same-sex couples' attorney Mary Bonauto. "My question is you're not seeking to join the institution, you're seeking to change what the institution is. The fundamental core of the institution is the opposite-sex relationship and you want to introduce into it a same-sex relationship." To that remark, Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried said he would have replied, "So what?" "At one time, people thought women were inferior to men intellectually and physically, and Aristotle thought women made no contribution to the genetic component." said Fried, a U.S. solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan and a former member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. "They were wrong then, and we think we've got it right now. If I had been arguing ... I'd have said, 'Maybe that was the definition back then, but it's the wrong definition of the concept we're talking about now.'"

Where is the legal star power on this year’s law school commencement circuit? It seems the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will sit out the 2015 graduation grind. ... Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, seems the 2015 law school graduation MVP. He is slated to deliver remarks during the University of California, Berkeley School of Law’s May 15 ceremony, followed by graduations at Pace Law School on May 17 and New York University School of Law on May 21. Bharara is a veteran on the law commencement scene—he earned rave reviews along with actress Mindy Kaling when they spoke together during Harvard Law School’s class day in 2014. For this year’s class day event, Harvard law students will hear from former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly. The couple has advocated gun control since Giffords was wounded in a 2011 mass shooting. ... At least three Harvard law professors will address students at other schools: Cass Sunstein at the University of Pennsylvania Law School; Charles Fried at Columbia Law School; and David Wilkins at the University of Iowa College of Law.

The U.S. Supreme Court has almost certainly made its decision about the right to marry for same-sex couples...Most legal observers who watched or listened to the oral arguments from April 28 in Obergefell v. Hodges, an appeal seeking to strike down bans on same-sex marriages in four states, predict Justice Anthony Kennedy will vote with the court's four liberal wing and find the bans unconstitutional...Roberts' seeming willingness to recognize sex discrimination in the context of bans on same-sex marriage stood in stark contrast to his equally blunt comment to same-sex couples' attorney Mary Bonauto. "My question is you're not seeking to join the institution, you're seeking to change what the institution is. The fundamental core of the institution is the opposite-sex relationship and you want to introduce into it a same-sex relationship." To that remark, Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried said he would have replied, "So what?" "At one time, people thought women were inferior to men intellectually and physically, and Aristotle thought women made no contribution to the genetic component." said Fried, a U.S. Solicitor General under President Reagan and a former member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. "They were wrong then, and we think we've got it right now. If I had been arguing…I'd have said, 'Maybe that was the definition back then, but it's the wrong definition of the concept we're talking about now'."

A letter by Charles Fried and Robert Mnookin. Your editorial entitled “Title IX and University Administration” argues the importance of uniform Title IX procedures across “One Harvard." Uniformity in some matters is good, but you do not say why it is needed for this one. The reason the law faculty drafted its own procedures was the overwhelming sentiment in our faculty that the university’s Title IX procedures were so unfair as to be unacceptable. At our meetings not a single faculty member spoke in defense of the university’s procedures. And, after all, procedure is what we do. If we had not been allowed to draft our own procedures a strong denunciation by the faculty would almost certainly have followed and would have made law suits by accused students a virtual certainty.