[3] After graduating from the Lawrenceville School in 1952, Fried attended Princeton University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and received an A.B.

in modern languages and literature in 1956 after completing a senior thesis titled "The Phedre of Racine: An Analysis of the Play's Artistry.

From 1960 to 1961, he served as law clerk to United States Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan II.

[8] Fried was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1995 by his former student, Governor Bill Weld,[11] and served in that role until June 1999,.

[9] Prior to joining the court, Fried held the chair of Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School.

Unusually for a law professor without a graduate degree in philosophy, he published significant work in moral and political theory only indirectly related to the law; Right and Wrong, for instance is a general statement of a Kantian position in ethics with affinities with the work of Thomas Nagel, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick.

[8][12] On September 27, 2010, he and Gregory Fried discussed their book Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy, and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

[9] In September 2005, Fried testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the nomination of John Roberts to become Chief Justice of the United States.

"[14] Fried testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and wrote a New York Times op-ed in support of Alito, who had served under him in the Solicitor General's office.

Fried cited McCain's selection of Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin as his running mate as the principal reason for his decision to vote for Obama.

[16] As president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990, Obama had published an article Fried wrote criticizing the effects of race-based affirmative action.

[18]In February 2011, Fried testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

[24] While working for the Reagan administration Fried argued that the case Roe v. Wade should be overturned in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services.