July 21, 2025 – Stanford, CA – Stanford Law School announced today that Fred O. Smith Jr., JD ’07, has joined the faculty as a professor of law. A leading voice on constitutional law, civil procedure, and the federal judiciary, Smith returns to the school where, as a first-year student, he set his sights on a career in academia. 

In addition to teaching Constitutional Law and Constitutional Litigation, Smith will launch a first-of-its-kind course on posthumous legal interests in early 2026. 

“A few years ago, when I taught Federal Courts at Stanford as a visiting professor, it was in the exact classroom where I had taken that same course as a student,” said Smith, who comes to Stanford Law from Emory University School of Law and was previously a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law. “It felt like both an extraordinary privilege and a profound responsibility, and those feelings are even stronger now that I am back as a member of the faculty. It is a wonderful homecoming, especially because everywhere I look, I see someone who has taught me or collaborated with me.”

At Emory, Smith was named Outstanding Professor of the Year in 2019, 2022, and 2023. He is the co-author of the casebooks Constitutional Torts, 5th ed. (2020) and Federal Courts in Context, 1st ed. (2023), co-authored with (among others) Norman Spaulding, JD ’97, Nelson Bowman Sweitzer and Marie B. Sweitzer Professor of Law and one of Smith’s former professors at Stanford Law. Smith clerked for Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Myron Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, and Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 

“It’s a great pleasure to welcome Fred back to Stanford Law,” said George Triantis, JSD ’89, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law School. “His work spans core areas of the legal system, including constitutional law, civil procedure, and the federal judiciary, and he has opened up new scholarly ground with his research on posthumous legal interests. He’s also a gifted and engaging teacher, widely praised by students for bringing clarity, energy, and rigor to the classroom.”

A Groundbreaking Class

In the 2026 spring quarter, Smith will debut a new course at Stanford Law—Rights After Death—believed to be the first law school class in the country focused entirely on posthumous legal interests. Though questions about the rights of the deceased arise across virtually every legal area—from civil procedure and constitutional law to property, torts, and intellectual property—they have rarely been treated as a unified area of study, said Smith, who is among a small, but growing group of scholars focusing on this area of inquiry. 

“When a plaintiff dies mid-litigation, when a family seeks redress for the treatment of a loved one’s remains, when laws govern the reputational rights or creative legacy of the deceased—those are all posthumous legal interests,” he said, “but we tend to treat them as isolated questions rather than a broader legal category. The law doesn’t just regulate behavior, it reflects our values. That’s one thing that makes this area of study so interesting: it illuminates what we respect, how we mourn, and what we remember.”

An Early Start in Legal Scholarship

Smith’s path into legal academia began when he was an undergrad at Harvard University. His senior honors thesis involved a quantitative analysis of whether male and female judges rule differently on questions of gay rights. In the early days of his first year at Stanford Law, he submitted the resulting paper—Gendered Justice: Do Male and Female Justices Rule Differently on Questions of Gay Rights?—to the Stanford Law Review, which published it during his first year of law school—a rare distinction for a 1L student. Drawing on an empirical analysis of 424 judicial decisions by 244 judges, Smith’s research uncovered statistically significant gender-based differences in rulings, with female judges more likely to support gay and lesbian plaintiffs on due process and equal protection grounds. 

Publishing the article solidified Smith’s desire to become a professor—an ambition he traces back even further. “Growing up, when my friends and I played school, I always had to be the teacher,” he said. “Later, while working on my thesis, I realized how much I loved asking hard questions—and being asked hard questions—also testing assumptions, and contributing to a deeper understanding of how the law works. That experience convinced me I wanted to spend my career doing just that.”

About Stanford Law School

Stanford Law School is one of the nation’s leading institutions for legal scholarship and education. Its alumni are among the most influential decision makers in law, politics, business, and high technology. Faculty members argue before the Supreme Court, testify before Congress, produce outstanding legal scholarship and empirical analysis, and contribute regularly to the nation’s press as legal and policy experts. Stanford Law School has established a model for legal education that provides rigorous interdisciplinary training, hands-on experience, global perspective and a focus on public service.