Barbara Fried

Barbara Helen Fried (born 1951) is an American lawyer and professor emeritus at Stanford Law School. Education She graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. degree magna cum laude in English and American Literature in 1977 and an M.A. degree in literature in 1980, as well as a J.D. degree magna cum laude in 1983 from Harvard Law School. Fried served from 1983 to 1984 as a judicial law clerk under J. Edward Lumbard, Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Career Fried joined the Stanford Law School Faculty as a tenure-track professor in 1987 after working as an associate attorney at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison from 1984 to 1987. She has investigated such topics as contractualism, libertarianism, and utilitarianism, and is considered an expert on legal ethics. Fried has written about effective altruism and moral philosopher Peter Singer. She has offered critiques on philosopher Robert Nozick's theory of property and psychologist John Money's work on "fetally androgenized girls." Her academic work centers on a branch of ethics known as consequentialism, or the idea that the results of our actions are more important than abstract notions of right and wrong. Fried is an affiliate of the Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality.