Harvard

Stephen E. Sachs | 4.10.2024 10:04 AM

Recently I was honored to be chosen as the faculty advisor to Harvard's student chapter of the Federalist Society, the successor to the late Charles Fried. This past weekend I gave some remarks at their annual alumni banquet, both to remember Prof. Fried and to set out some challenges before us. In case any of you have an interest in reading them, I thought I'd post the remarks here.

I'm very honored and deeply grateful to be here as the second faculty advisor to the Harvard Law student chapter of the Federalist Society.

It's unusual, to say the least, in a chapter now four decades old, that I would be only the second such advisor. And so I don't think we can let this occasion pass without remembering the first such advisor, Charles Fried, and without raising a glass in his memory.

Charles Fried led a life and career that should offer grounds for admiration to all of us. Solicitor General of the United States, Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the Beneficial Professor of Law, a teacher and mentor to many, a father and a grandfather—as they say, we should all be so lucky.

My father Alan Sachs, HLS Class of 1970, was Prof. Fried's student and remembers him and his class fondly. Another of Prof. Fried's students, a dissertation advisee, recently told me how her first substantive meeting with him involved the two of them starting to discuss what she had written and then arguing with raised voices and at full tilt for an hour—at the end of which he broke into a broad smile and asked when they should meet to discuss the next chapter.

Those of my colleagues who've had more time to share with him on this faculty universally praise his wit, his collegiality, and his generosity of spirit. And if, when my turn comes, my successor as the third faculty advisor to our FedSoc chapter can have as much respect for me as all those I've met here have for Prof. Fried, I'd be a lucky man indeed.

And Prof. Fried was, as well as an extraordinary man, extraordinarily lucky.

Karel Fried was born in Prague in 1935—and for Jews, "born in Prague in 1935" is not usually the prologue to a long or happy life. His family was able to flee in 1939 just ahead of the Nazis, arriving in New York in 1941. As he told us at the faculty lunch table a few months ago, his father initially intended that the family........

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