PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT
John Adams Courthouse
One Pemberton Square
Boston, Massachusetts 02108
MEDIA ADVISORY
CONTACT:
Jennifer Donahue/Erika Gully-Santiago
PublicInfo@sjc.state.ma.us
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 5, 2025
Supreme Judicial Court to Hold Special Sitting to Present Memorial to the Honorable Charles Fried
WHAT:
The Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court will hold a special sitting for the presentation of a memorial to the Honorable Charles Fried, who passed away on January 23, 2024. Justice Fried was an Associate Justice on the Supreme Judicial Court from 1995 to 1999.
Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Kimberly S. Budd will deliver opening remarks. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, through her First Assistant, M. Patrick Moore, Jr., will present the memorial and make a motion that the minutes of the memorial be placed in the record of the Court. Attorney William F. Lee and Attorney Louis W. Tompros will speak on behalf of the Bar, and Attorney Kristen Smith-Dayley will speak on behalf of Justice Fried’s former law clerks. Supreme Judicial Court Justice Scott L. Kafker will respond on behalf of the Court and grant the motion.
The Reporter of Decisions will gather the remarks of the people who speak at the memorial for inclusion in the Massachusetts Reports. The Reporter has been publishing memorials for more than 200 years, beginning with the first memorial sitting held a decade after the creation of the Office of the Reporter of Decisions. The first memorial was of Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Theophilis Parsons, on November 23, 1813.
WHEN:
Thursday, February 6, at 3:00 p.m.
WHERE:
John Adams Courthouse
Courtroom One
Boston, MA 02108
The program will also be livestreamed on https://boston.suffolk.edu/sjc/.
Biography of The Honorable Charles Fried, Associate Justice
The Honorable Charles Fried was sworn in as Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court in 1995 by Governor William Weld. He served in this role until 1999.
Justice Fried spent much of his career as a professor at Harvard Law School, joining the faculty in 1961 and retiring in 2023.
From 1985 to 1989, Justice Fried served as the 38th Solicitor General of the United States, having previously served as Deputy Solicitor General.
Justice Fried also served as a consultant to several federal agencies, including the Office of the U.S. Attorney General, and to the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development joint mission to Rwanda.
He earned an A.B. degree from Princeton University in 1956; bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oxford University in 1958 and 1960, respectively; and an LL.B. degree from Columbia University Law School in 1960, where he was a Stone Scholar and earned the Ordronaux Prize in Law at graduation. After his graduation from law school, he served as law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan II.
Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, in 1935, Justice Fried became a United States citizen in 1948.