Charles Fried

Charles Anthony Fried (born April 15, 1935) is an American jurist and lawyer. He served as United States Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and has been a visiting professor at Columbia Law School. He also serves on the board of the nonpartisan group, the Campaign Legal Center. Fried is the author of nine books and over 30 journal articles, and his work has appeared in over a dozen collections. Early life and education Fried was born in 1935 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where his father was an important industrialist and Czech patriot. The Frieds left Czechoslovakia in 1939 to escape Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews, lived in England for almost two years and came to the United States in 1941 via Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He and his parents became United States citizens in 1948, after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. 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). In 1960, Fried received his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Columbia Law School, where he was a Stone Scholar. Subsequently, he served as law clerk to United States Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan II. In 1961, he began teaching at Harvard Law School.