Barbara H. Fried’s scholarly interests lie at the intersection of law, economics, and philosophy. She has written extensively on questions of distributive justice, in the areas of tax policy, property theory and political theory. She is also the author of a path-breaking intellectual biography of Robert Hale, one of the leading legal realists. Professor Fried is a three-time winner of the John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching. She regularly teaches the Legal Studies Workshop at Stanford Law School, an interdisciplinary student-faculty workshop designed for law students interested in pursuing academic careers, as well as contracts, modern American legal thought, tax, and advanced seminars in law and moral/political theory. She has twice been a visiting professor of law at New York University Law School.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1987, Professor Fried practiced as an associate with the New York City law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and served as a law clerk to Judge J. Edward Lumbard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.