Barry Friedman has spent several decades writing, teaching, and litigating about constitutional law, civil rights, judicial procedure, policing, and public safety. He is the founder and faculty director of the Policing Project at New York University (NYU) School of Law, which is focused on bringing democratic accountability to policing and public safety. Previously, Friedman served as the reporter for the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law: Policing, special advisor to the New York Attorney General on the NYPD’s response to the 2020 protests, and president of the ACLU of Tennessee.
Friedman is the author of The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (2009) and Unwarranted: Policing without Permission (2017), as well as numerous academic publications on topics of constitutional law, the courts, policing, and public safety. He writes frequently in popular media, including The New York Times, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, and the New Republic. He, along with co-authors from law and the social sciences, published an interdisciplinary set of teaching material, Judicial Decision-Making: A Coursebook (2020). He also is the co-author of Open Book: The Inside Track to Law School Success.
Among Friedman’s recognitions for his teaching and writing are the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, a fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s research center in Bellagio, Italy, the ACLU of Tennessee’s Clarence Darrow Award for his work defending civil liberties, and the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award. He received his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center and clerked for Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
