Barry E. Friedman

Barry E. Friedman (born January 23, 1958) is an American academic and one of the country's leading authorities on constitutional law, policing, criminal procedure, and federal courts, working at the intersections of law, politics and history. Friedman teaches a variety of courses including Judicial Decisionmaking, Federal Courts and the Federal System, and Criminal Procedure: Fourth and Fifth Amendments, as well as a seminar on Democratic Policing. He writes about judicial review, constitutional law and theory, federal jurisdiction, judicial behavior, and policing. His scholarship appears regularly in the nation's top law and peer-edited reviews.

His book, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), examines the history of the relationship between popular opinion and the Supreme Court, from 1776 to the present. Along with his co-author Stephen Burbank Friedman co-edited and contributed to Judicial Independence at the Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Approach, which questions common assumptions about the nature of judicial independence and how it can be protected.

Professor Friedman also co-wrote Open Book: How to Succeed on Exams From the First Day of Law School (Aspen, 2nd ed. 2016), a guide to succeeding in law school for students, with Professor John Goldberg.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of his work, Professor Friedman regularly appears at conferences in law, political science and history. He is the reporter for the American Law Institute's new Principles of Law: Police Investigations, and the founder and Director of NYU Law's Policing Project, which is dedicated to strengthening policing through democratic governance.