Fred Smith Jr., JD ’07, is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a leading scholar of the federal courts. His work on abstention, governmental immunities, and the allocation of power between state and federal courts has shaped contemporary debates over federal jurisdiction. This work has recovered histories the field forgot and people its doctrines render invisible. He co-authors Federal Courts in Context (with Erwin Chemerinsky, Seth Davis, and Norman Spaulding) and Constitutional Torts, now in its sixth edition (with Sheldon Nahmod, Tom Eaton, Noah Smith-Drelich, and Michael Wells), and serves as an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Constitutional Torts. He is also building the emerging field of posthumous legal interests, where he created the first law school course of its kind.

His scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, New York University Law Review, and University of Chicago Law Review, among others. He lectures on these subjects across the United States and internationally, including in Istanbul, Shanghai, and Warsaw, and is regularly consulted as an expert by major media outlets, including CNN, CBS News, MSNBC, NPR, Time, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Smith clerked for Judge Myron Thompson (M.D. Ala.), Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. (2d Cir.), and Justice Sonia Sotomayor (U.S. Supreme Court). He has held faculty positions at Berkeley Law and Emory Law and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Columbia, and Yale. At Emory, he was named Outstanding Professor of the Year in 2019, 2022, and 2023.

Smith serves as Board Chair of Lambda Legal, the nation’s oldest and largest legal organization dedicated to the civil rights of LGBTQ people.