Charles Fried, a conservative lawyer who as President Ronald Reagan's lawyer normal argued towards abortion rights and affirmative motion earlier than the Supreme Court docket — however who later rejected the march to the fitting of the conservative authorized motion, calling the present excessive courtroom “reactionary” – died Tuesday at his house in Cambridge, Mass. He was 88 years previous.
His demise was introduced by Harvard Legislation Faculty, the place Mr. Fried taught a number of thousand college students starting in 1961, amongst them a future Supreme Court docket justice, Stephen G. Breyer, and a future governor of Massachusetts. , William F. Weld.
Mr. Fried (pronounced “liberated”) was the son of Jewish dad and mom who fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 to flee Nazism, and whose hopes of returning house after the battle have been dashed by the autumn of the Curtain of Iron. He traced his political conservatism to that background and to the hard-left environment that prevailed at Harvard Legislation Faculty within the Nineteen Seventies, which, he recalled, included faculty-led Marxist research teams.
It has turn out to be “fairly allergic to the left,” Mr. Fried mentioned at a legislation college panel final 12 months. “And this allergy took a kind the place I needed to be slightly within the opposition. And what higher solution to be within the opposition than to enter the Reagan administration?”
In 1985, as solicitor normal — the White Home's consultant earlier than the Supreme Court docket — Mr. Fried argued that Roe v. However then he modified his thoughts. Because the Supreme Court docket's Republican supermajority appeared prone to overturn Roe, Mr. Fried wrote in 2021 in an opinion column for the New York Occasions, “To overturn Roe now could be an act of constitutional vandalism.”
His reasoning was {that a} 1992 case, Deliberate Parenthood v. Casey, had established extra firmly the fitting to abortion than when he opposed it for the Reagan White Home.
On the Harvard panel final 12 months, titled “Why I Modified My Thoughts,” Mr. Fried mentioned that his mental evolution from conservative to reasonable was additionally formed by conversations together with his grownup youngsters and grandchildren. “Let's discuss, and I'm going to pay attention as I discuss,” he mentioned. “So, in the middle of that, it modified me.”
Though Mr. Fried testified in favor of the affirmation of John G. Roberts as chief justice in 2005, he turned an outspoken critic of the Roberts courtroom on its rulings that restricted voting rights, unions of labor and marketing campaign finance reform, in addition to his refusal to restrict partisan gerrymandering.
He referred to as these selections “reactionary, not conservative”, within the basic sense of conservatism as respect for precedent and a perception in change that’s incremental and never radical.
Justice Breyer, who was appointed to the excessive courtroom by President Invoice Clinton and can retire in 2022, steered in a press release that Mr. Fried was keen to alter his views due to his innate mental honesty .
“Charles cherished concepts,” she mentioned. “He tried them on his colleagues and associates, discarding some, growing others, and all the time listening to the ideas of others.”
Mr. Fried's educational pursuits embrace how ethical and political philosophy has formed authorized points; wrote a number of books on the topic, together with “An Anatomy of Values” (1970) and “Proper and Flawed” (1978).
A longtime Republican who for 40 years suggested the Harvard chapter of the conservative Federalist Society, Mr. Fried was a very harsh critic of President Donald J. Trump's contempt for the courts and the legislation, and the Justice Division. underneath his second lawyer normal, William. P. Barr.
Mr. Fried and different Republican and conservative attorneys, members of a gaggle referred to as Checks & Balances, have publicly chastised Mr. Barr for defending Mr. Trump's makes an attempt to hinder the investigation into Russian interference within the U.S. election. in 2016 and, in 2019, to stress Ukraine – which led to the primary impeachment of Mr. Trump.
“Individuals who say they’re conservatives at this time demand loyalty to this utterly lawless, ignorant, evil-doing president,” Mr. Fried informed The Occasions in 2019. He disclosed within the Boston Globe in 2016 that he deliberate to vote for Hillary. Clinton.
Through the second impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, for inciting an revolt on January 6, 2021, Mr. Fried joined different constitutional attorneys in a press release that referred to as the group's claims of Mr. Trump's protection that his conduct was protected by the “legally frivolous” First Modification. “
Charles Fried was born Karel Fried in Prague on April 15, 1935, to Antonin and Marta (Winterstein)Fried. His father was a senior vp at Skoda Works, a producer of heavy equipment and weapons. The household fled to England – “with Hitler as my journey agent,” as Mr. Fried as soon as mentioned – the place they lived for 2 years earlier than shifting to New York Metropolis in 1941. Within the States United, his father had an import-export. enterprise, the place his mom labored as an assistant supervisor.
(When the communist authorities in Prague collapsed in 1989 throughout the Velvet Revolution, Mr. Fried joined different Western attorneys in advising the Czech authorities on a brand new structure.)
After graduating from Lawrenceville Faculty in New Jersey, he earned a BA in fashionable languages and literature from Princeton in 1956. He studied legislation and philosophy on a Fulbright scholarship at Oxford College, then graduated from Columbia Legislation Faculty in 1960.
He was a clerk for Supreme Court docket Justice John Marshall Harlan II and in 1961, at age 26, he joined the school of Harvard Legislation Faculty. Mr. Breyer was in his top notch, on legal legislation.
The Reagan administration recruited Mr. Fried when he was 50, partly on the energy of papers he had written for the Reagan marketing campaign in 1980 on, amongst different issues, the way to voice opposition to the 'Equal Rights Modification in a presidential debate.
Apart from his years as solicitor normal, from 1985 to 1989, and a stint as an affiliate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court docket from 1995 to 1999 (he was appointed by his former pupil, Governor Weld ), Mr. Fried spent virtually 60 years. on the school of Harvard Legislation Faculty.
In 1993 whereas at Harvard, he argued a case earlier than the Supreme Court docket, Daubert v.
He’s survived by his spouse, Anne Summerscale Fried, an artwork historical past scholar whom he married in 1959; a son, Gregory, professor of philosophy at Boston School; a daughter, Antonia Fried, a psychologist; and 5 grandchildren.
Mr. Fried introduced his retirement in December, although he mentioned he deliberate to proceed weighing in on the authorized and political problems with the day.
“What do I plan subsequent?” he mentioned. “What I all the time do right here, exterior of lessons. I write, go to the workshop, learn the work of his colleagues, touch upon it, after which write my work.
That very same month, in a column in The Harvard Crimson, Mr. Fried defended the college's president, Claudine Homosexual, after she got here underneath fireplace for her response to anti-Semitism on campus.
He continued the protection after the assaults widened to incorporate Dr. Homosexual's scholarly report. He informed The Occasions that he dismissed the plagiarism costs towards Dr. Homosexual as a result of they have been a part of a “far-right assault on elite establishments.”
Dr. Homosexual resigned in January after additional stress and accusations of plagiarism.
