Fried Maybe on Court

Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence Charles Fried was one of four names submitted last week to Governor William F. Weld '66 as a potential nominee to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Fried had been widely reported to be a favorite for the head of the state's highest court.

The Judicial Nominating Commission completed a preliminary screening process of potential successors to retiring Justice Joseph R. Nolan and forwarded the names to Weld, who plans to interview each of the candidates, according to John Brockelman, a Weld spokesperson.

"He's going to obviously look for someone who is going to have a good background in the Law, experience, and integrity," he said. "It's a good bunch of candidates that have been sent."

Prior to his appointment at the Law School, Fried served as a clerk in 1960 for Supreme Court justice John M. Harlan. A member of the Harvard Law School faculty since 1961, Fried served as Solicitor General for the Reagan administration.

Fried instructed Weld when the governor attended Harvard Law School in the late 1960s.

In an interview yesterday, Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz praised Fried as "just what the Supreme Court of Massachusetts needs right now.

"I think he would be very much in the mold of Justice Breyer, a centrist civil libertarian," Dershowitz said. "I think he'd be a tremendous intellectual addition to the court."

Dershowitz said Fried "would be a pleasure to argue in front of" and "very provocative."

"Most of the justices on the Supreme Court are not the national figure that Charles Fried is," Dershowitz said.

Brockelman said the governor must make his appointment to the Court by June 13, the 70th birthday of current Nolan. Massachusetts law mandates the retirement of justices at age 70.